Lineage X
by ruth baulding
Summary: AU! Jedi Apprentice. Book 10: The war-ravaged world Melida-Daan is backdrop to a manhunt, an occult conspiracy, a bitter guerilla conflict, and a test of ultimate loyalties.
1. Chapter 1

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 1**

_And what is the nature of place, Seeker?_

_Place is relative to a center, Master. To be on this world or that is to be in the thrall of its gravitational center; the planet itself is located by reference to the star it orbits; the star in relation to the galaxy's centripetal drift; the galaxy, I suppose, is itself a satellite of some universal center projected by the mathematicians._

_To be here or there is to be centered, then._

_It would seem so, Master._

_But the Force is ubiquitous center, and so, all things are together within it – without separation or distinction of place._

_Distance matters not, nor size, nor any measurement of quantity._

_Very good. The question that lies before you is this: to which center does your inmost self belong – the physical or the spiritual?_

* * *

Obi-Wan woke when the ship reverted to realspace, his dreams collapsing back to prim reality as the bleeding starlines outside the viewport collapsed back into unitary points. He rubbed the heels of both hands over his face, pressed them into aching eyes, and then stood, tugging his dark tunic straight beneath his slightly skewed belt and clipping both sabers in place at either hip.

They had arrived.

"Your timing is impeccable," Dooku observed as he slipped into the cockpit. "We've just received a standard warning to alter our approach vector and make a detour."

The younger man checked the commsat display. "Well. Restricted access. War zone. No trade or ambassadorial traffic permitted – apparently fences do not make good neighbors."

The Sentinel held their vessel on a steady cruising trajectory as the light-rimmed curve of Melida-Daan came into view beneath them. "The injunctions are forty years old; I daresay the automated blockade is growing a bit… rusty."

Obi-Wan braced himself. Evasive maneuvers did not rank among his primary sources of job satisfaction. He discreetly latched his crash harness in place as Dooku skimmed into firing range of this first orbital sentry. "Forward shields up, cannon ready… have I mentioned that I find this sort of thing _tedious?"_

"You don't say," the Jedi master drawled, grey eyes narrowing to feral slits as they drew within firing range of the droid defensive station… but a closer inspection revealed the once formidable automated weapon-cluster to be nothing but a lump of cooled slag, long ago destroyed.

"I'm surprised the thrusters didn't short out and set it plummeting into atmosphere," Obi-Wan observed as they passed the decrepit chunk of metal and circuitry. "Or that scavengers haven't stopped by to pick this place clean."

"Very few come this way at all since the trade routes were re-calibrated. And those that do have other business to attend."

The second sentry was still active however, as evidenced by the warning shot it sent glancing off their bows. A third glinted in the viewport's corner, rapidly closing the gap between them. "Ah," Dooku breathed, mouth curving into a cold smile. "This may require aggressive negotiations."

His apprentice grimly laid hands upon the targeting controls. Blowing things to oblivion was lamentably uncivilized, but in such a situation there was little other recourse. Droid defensive systems seldom accepted a challenge to more genteel forms of conflict resolution and knew nothing of the refined arts of dueling. It boiled down to a swift contest of speed and accuracy, and pitted against the Force a droid had very little chance of triumph. There was, therefore, no honor in engaging them, and quite a bit of mess left over afterward.

Dooku flew Makashi-style, a tight twisting corkscrew and whiplash reverse bringing them beneath and over the initial blasts; Obi-Wan squeezed off three shots of his own, eyes closed because it was easier to locate his targets when he wasn't watching the stars blur into nauseating sworls of color, and took out the further attacker in a blazing conflagration.

"Blast." He'd missed his _intended_ target entirely.

"Hm," Dooku snorted, unimpressed, flipping their shuttle about in a maneuver its stabilizers really weren't designed to withstand.

Obi-Wan's next volley went wide, but that didn't count because his _master's _ piloting emulated a drunken bantha rollicking in a hayfield.

"Focus," the Sentinel barked.

Fine. He laid into the oncoming sentry point blank, aiming straight up its own cannon. It went up in a fireball, and they hurtled directly through it, the shields wailing their distress and console alarms flaring with outrage at the abuse.

"Effective," Dooku grumbled, "But, ah… "

"Aggressive, Master."

"Yes. Aggressive. Do try to contain yourself; we haven't even reached the surface yet."

* * *

By the time they had achieved that objective- strong-arming their way through another two automated attacks, and observing more than one more derelict remnant of the same droid regiment along the way – even Yan Dooku's carefully manicured calm was frayed about the edges. He set the shuttle down on a high plateau in the northern continent, a place barren and hard in its aspect, scoured by a pitiless climate.

"The capitol city of the northern provinces is situated just beyond the five klick marker," he murmured, powering down the ship's systems. "According to the most recently available data, the main front of the conflict was centered here, as well as the strategic headquarters of both factions. Needless to say, there are multiple other urban sites we might choose; if this proves a dead end, we shall visit some of the other ghost towns. It is possible the fighting has moved in the last ten years."

But no sooner had they set foot on the dusty expanse outside the ramp than they knew this to be unnecessary. Obi-Wan balked a little, gritting his teeth against the overpowering tide of hatred, wafting like a foul stench on the Force's currents, a palpable effluvia of malice and ingrained cruelty. Dooku stood rigid for a moment, seeming to scent the invisible winds, his aristocratic features twisting slightly in revulsion, and in satisfaction.

"Yes," he breathed, "He is here. I feel his signature clearly." A hand on his apprentice's shoulder stayed the younger man's forward movement. "We shall take our separate paths here, then. You are clear on the plan?"

"Of course , Master. I will proceed into the city and run to ground, with whichever of the warring parties seems most convenient or welcoming. I am to wait there until I receive signal from you, or Kar'Thon, before attempting an infiltration of Syfo-Dyas' organization."

"Very good. In the meantime I shall make my presence felt about the periphery – a nagging distraction to keep our old friend off balance."

Obi-Wan nodded, glancing once over his shoulder at the landscape beyond. "What if he senses _my_ presence? I will shield as heavily as possible, but he is very skilled."

The senior Jedi waved this aside. "I am confident he will invest his attention in deducing my intentions; besides, it is unlikely he is aware that we are associated in any way. While he is busy fretting over the perceived greater threat, we shall strike from behind."

A grim bow, acknowledgment that this game of dejarik was played for the ultimate stakes, and admitted no room for error.

"Mat the Force be with you," Dooku said, formally releasing his student to his task.

Obi-Wan pulled the hood of his dark cloak far over his face and turned his steps toward the city, striding purposefully across Melida-Daan's voided fields, toward the pulsing center of conflict that he could as yet only see as a blurred irregularity upon the dim horizon.

* * *

It was a brisk hike, one that invited thought as a means of defense against the dark emotion roiling in the very atmosphere about the fateful city. Obi-Wan covered the five klicks at an easy loping pace, long habit unconsciously lengthening his gait to one that would match Qui-Gon Jinn's ground-eating stride.

This world was like no other he had ever set foot upon; Jedi ambassadors and peace keepers were sent to principalities where strife had recently broken out, or which teetered upon the edge of disaster. They were not assigned to places where all attempts at reconciliation had long since failed, where endless civil war had reigned for decades without intervention from without. The orbital blockade system they had bypassed on their way into Melida-Daan's gravity well was one of Republic manufacture – a seal placed upon a doomed hell-hole, a judgement passed upon a people condemned to reap the fruits of their own folly evermore. He had of course learned of – read about – such things in his education at the Temple. He had perhaps even discussed such a possibility in theoretical debate among peers or instructors… but it had never, he now realized, hit home.

The galactic Senate had chosen to abandon the project of peace here, for the sake of wider stability. The last team of Jedi sent to forestall absolute war on the strife-ridden world had been brutally murdered forty years ago – and yet even the sure knowledge of these deaths did not allow the fact of the blockade and all that it implied to sit easily with him.

_Focus on the present moment,_ he reminded himself. His task here was specific and precluded involvement in the much wider planetary affairs. Dooku and he would get in, achieve their goal, and get out – preferably destroying whatever malfeasance Syfo-Dyas was currently undertaking. Stopping the inertial decay of this hate-besotted madhouse of a planet was far beyond their – or any Jedi's – power.

Hate in the end was always stronger.

He stopped dead in his tracks, breath catching in his throat. _Fool!_

He fell to his knees just where he was, closing his eyes and shutting out the pervasice whisper of despair in the plenum, focusing upon the Light, upon his 'saber crystals, any anchor in this tempest of resentment and anger. How easily he had strayed into its penumbral influence – like a small initiate, a green youngling. What ailed him, now, here, when he was so close to the consummation of a year's hard striving for justice?

"Compassion is stronger," he asserted, aloud.

The cold rocks echoed his words back at him, hollowed of conviction.

"Mercy is stronger," he shouted over the broken fragments of his own voice, the Force taking up the call, resounding with it, a discordant note in the chaos of this place, a misplaced thread of harmony trying to weave its way through a vengeful briar-tangle.

_Force help me and guide me._ He stood and pressed onward, carving a psychic path through the hedge of ill-will erected in memory and fact about the city's walls – massive durasteel mountains, things imposing and vast and determinedly faceless, an iron cauldron containing the raging and vindictive froth within.

What he had taken as the outline of highrises and distant edifices was nothing but the erratic silhouettes of guard towers and bastions along the topmost edge of this fortress. Holo-flags were posted in eastern and western turrets, two opposing insignia shimmering in the bright afternoon sun, men in drab uniforms posted at either extremity of the wall.

He slipped behind the last jutting lip of rock and peered at the obstacle long and hard. The Melida and the Daan controlled the wall equally, an enmity blanketing the city in physical space, half to each. The gates looked as though they had not been opened in eons, its surface oxidized to a dull green, ray shields flickering dully over their heavy panels. The sentries were facing inward, toward the city below, not focused particularly on the world outside the boundaries of their two peoples' all-consuming dispute.

He wrapped himself in the Force, in a mantle of woven greys, the men's own unimaginative obsession compacted with the Light's subtle suasion, a shifting veil over his approach. He chose a place exactly halfway between the opposing parties, near the main gate, and launched his cable high into the parapets above. The sound attracted the guards' momentary notice; he made a careful gesture with one hand, projecting _indifference_, _inconsequence_ in a wide circle of influence.

The mind trick worked, his potential foes quickly losing interest. Obi-Wan grinned, pleased with his success. While most mind tricks were directed at an individual subject and suggested specific thoughts or actions, this more difficult skill used the same power to spread impressions and sensations in an invisible ripple, a net of illusion, another Shadow's honed technique. A pity that Dooku had not been here to witness his minor triumph.

One minute later he had ascended the dangling cable in three Force-aided bounds and dropped in a single liquid motion to the pavement on the other side, blending seamlessly into the shaded obscurity at the city's margins.


	2. Chapter 2

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 2**

The city resembled nothing so much as the tattered corpse of some felled beast, its entrails spilled and pecked at by scavengers, bones starkly displayed beneath a pitiless sun, its blood already dry and sticky upon the earth.

Indeed, there was blood underfoot.

Not that he could tell precisely where Force-perception ended and reality began; did it matter, in the end, whether he trod upon the marks of remembered violence or recent destruction? Murder did not fade with time, as bad dreams were supposed to do. It lingered, an unlanced pustule within the universal energy, sometimes for centuries. In a place such as this, the psychic echoes piled up like stained snowdrifts until the very Force was clotted with them, drenched and dyed the lurid hue of hatred.

Obi-Wan took a brief rest against a crumbling wall, one pock marked by blaster fire. Nobody had warned him of the sheer difficulty of _being_ amidst such fermented strife. His every cell screamed for respite, for the release of meditation or some other technique by which he might separate himself from this surrounding horror – but the nature of the mission required that he be open to it, at least for now. It was of paramount importance that he find one side or another, either Melida or Daan, and insert himself among them, patient and watchful.

The prospect – one he had accepted with blithe practicality at the mission's outset – now seemed daunting beyond measure. How was he to infiltrate and live among not mere murderers and scoundrels, but among people who ate _anger_ for their daily bread, who sucked at hatred's teats like a misbegotten brood of –

_Breathe. _He must not let the swelling tide of contempt here direct his own thoughts. He extended his awareness a trifle further, daring to encompass a broader swath of the city than he had hitherto – and discovered a kind of clearing at its center, a place where the frenetic clamor of warfare seemed to withdraw a space, leaving a graced moment of calm. It was not his mandate to seek relief from the impinging darkness, but he fled for this spot like a wild beast dying of thirst.

Even a Jedi has his limits, and in certain conditions, his connection to the Force is almost a vulnerability. _Play to your strengths, and do not fight a losing battle._ He told himself that it was a strategic retreat, that it was a means of effecting further reconnaissance, that it was simply needful.

He told himself that he was weak, and then ruefully pled guilty to the charge. .

He _hated_ it here.

* * *

The oasis proved to be a literal clearing as well – a gutted courtyard surrounded by ruinous buildings on four sides. The chipped and cracked pavement had once been of ornate design, and the crumbled remnants of ornamental fountains and benches upon plinths could still be identified here and there. In the now desolated space a great number of people now milled – most clad in fading and patched togther military uniforms, or the drab gear of impromptu militiamen. The women were similarly attired, and indeed what few children were present as well, dirty and fear-hardened faces making them appear older than their slight stature suggested. The dark blues and pale greys of Melida and Daan mixed together uncomfortably here in the square, a convocation of uneasy allies. And on all sides, in corners and at the edges of broken planters, upon bench and empty fountain's rim, within the cracks of paving stones, upon battered portable braziers, indeed upon every available flat surface, small fires burned, skeins of smoke rising in supplication to the darkening sky.

He left the shadows and wandered among the ceremony's participants, wondering at the meaning of this rite, at the armistice which permitted it to unfold without bloodshed.

"What is this?" he wondered, half-aloud.

"It's firstday. Ancestors' day. What hole did you just crawl out of?"

The speaker was a woman, clad in neither blue nor grey, but a motley assortment of weather-worn gear and cast-offs, the regalia of a mercenary fighter fallen upon hard times. Her hair was a deep and lustrous red, fretted ever so delicately with silver, no more than a handful of white strands among the fiery riot. She regarded him cagily, tiny creases radiating about wide eyes, her lightly freckled skin bearing the first faint lines of age, though still flushed with a healthy glow. In the Force, she shimmered slightly, a moth's fluttering wings brushing against his mind.

A mild Sensitive – untrained, probably unaware of her gift. "Ancestors' day.. of course," he hedged. "I've lost track of time."

The woman smiled then, a wry sympathy lighting her features. "I know how that feels. Which side are you on, anyway?"

He sensed the danger of the question, even without the benefit of prior knowledge. To indicate the wrong allegiance might spark corrosive distrust, even during this temporary truce. "The same as you, naturally," he offered, disingenuously.

"Really." Dubiety rasped in the woman's voice, strangely contradicted by a sudden glint of hope in her eyes. Her gaze raked over him head to foot. "Well, if that's the case, then feel free to share my shrine." She gestured to a small blackened brazier propped in a cleft of tumbled masonry nearby "I've finished and if we are _on the same side_ then our Fallen Ones are united in purpose, aren't they?"

Obi-Wan nodded, peering at the charred remnants of cloth and what have been flower petals, a lumpen mass nestled within the bronzium bowl. "Thank you."

She folded her arms and watched him kneel before the smoldering embers of her own offering. "You haven't brought anything to burn," she observed.

"I'll manage." He inhaled, the motley incense of a hundred-fold burnt offering coating his lungs with a sickly ash.

"You _must_ have Fallen Ones to honor. Everybody does."

"I do." Among them one for whom a proper funeral pyre might never be built. He wasn't certain, of course – and Master Dooku wielded great influence among his peers on the Council – but the Jedi Order historically did not bestow public honors upon apostates, no matter what private estimation of their worth its individual members might entertain.

And the lack of traditional ceremony suddenly seemed an offense crying out to the Force for redress. "I… my father."

"Oh," the woman sighed. "I am sorry." Her tone conveyed the empathy of one who had suffered the same deprivation, and more.

He slid the Vespari steel knife from its boot-sheath, hefting the precious blade in his hand with a small frown of recollection. More than four years had passed since the occasion of its giving into his care as a gift. Though oft employed, its edge was undulled, as keen and forge-bright as his fifteen-year-old self's determination and naivete. It was just as well that one of them remained unjaded, unscarred by the intervening years, as a Jedi's heart and devotion should be. Peripherally aware of the red-haired woman's gaze boring a hole between his shoulders, he reached up and closed a rough fist about his luxurious fall of hair, the chestnut tangle that had not been trimmed since the fateful day Qui-Gon Jinn had left the Temple in pursuit of the Whills' shaman and, it would appear, his own final destiny. With a quick thrust he drew the knife's peerless edge through the twisted mass, shearing off a large handful. This he tossed upon the brazier's coals, softly blowing their guttering flames into renewed life. The knife slid back into its hiding place; his hair curled and blackened in the sacrificial dish; his hands went of their own accord to his twin saber hilts. Where the two sapphire crystals inaudibly chimed.

"We are luminous beings, not this gross matter. There is no death; there is the Force." _I will honor your memory and teachings in thought, word and deed, my Master._

"You are neither Melida nor Daan," his new acquaintance concluded. "Where _are_ you from?"

He glanced over one shoulder, gauging her trustworthiness. The Force was sonorous, approving. "Off planet."

Her eyes widened. "I should call you a liar, but something tells me…. Well, I have a good feeling about you."

At this point in his short career, he was aware that his personal presence often inspired one of two opposite and extreme reactions; this one was on the whole preferable in its ramifications to the other. He grinned, inviting further trust. "You mean you don't need to shoot me on sight at our next meeting?"

The jest seemed to take her off guard, and he immediately divined that _joking_ was something long-forgotten here in this citadel of perpetual death and mayhem. "That doesn't mean nobody else will," she replied, edgily. "The two hours is nearly up. Don't you think you'd better get back to… wherever you came from?"

All about them, people were dousing fires and scuttling into broken porticoes and collapsing alleyways. Snipers and sentinels appeared upon rooftops, in blasted window frames.

"Ah." He blew out a short breath, feeling the customary hostilities set to resume at any minute. "That might be… problematic."

Her hand closed about his wrist, and he found himself tugged into the shelter of a ruined pagoda at one end of the courtyard. "You'd better come with me, then." She flicked fingers over his tunic front. "The only thing black used to mean around here was _clerical_ caste – and that's likely to get you killed by either side."

"Good to know," he quipped. "I wouldn't want to be killed under false pretenses."

The display of gallows humor again proved bemusing; after a moment, she forced a breath of laughter. "Listen, smart mouth. I'm taking a risk on you. Don't make me regret it, okay?"

The Force warmed with a new possibility, a third option. He dipped his head, boldly taking up the challenge. "Lead on."

* * *

_What of origin? Place and origin are closely linked; what is heredity but a different kind of place?_

_You mean that our personal origins define and place us within the universe as a whole._

_Yes, and that kinship and descent are centers of their own right, as distracting from the omnipresence of Light just as physical place obscures its truth. For what reason, Seeker, do the Jedi take their initiates away from their families before the age of memory and reason, thus cutting them off from their natural centers, location and legacy alike?_

_I do not know, my Master. There is much I have never learned, or have forgotten._

_Then consider this: the physical is bounded by place, and is descended in measureless generations from other bodies, a lineage of gross matter. But the luminous core is located only in the Force, and is the immediate offspring of the Light. Best then that it be removed so far as possible form the obscuring veils of particularity, of all that renders it opaque and limited. We are children of the Light, not of seed and womb. _

_But…. are we not both?_

_You have much still to learn, Seeker._

* * *

They scrambled now through a dank network of tunnels, a disused sewer system, or perhaps a maze connecting subterranean bunkers.

"It seems a great risk of life merely to observe a customary rite in the open," Obi-Wan insisted, returning to the subject that had occupied them during the greater part of their journey.

"I don't care. I go back every firstday to memorialize my two children."

He felt her pang of exhumed grief. "I am sorry." A few more paces in pitch darkness, their steps slowing as they joined a smaller side passage. "I cannot imagine."

"No, you can't."

He determined to hold his peace after that, but she had other ideas. "What is your name, stranger? I need to introduce you to the others."

The others. Neither Melida nor Daan, he presumed, but some third unexpected party, the wild card in a sabaac deck. "Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"We don't use surnames here. We live for the day and one name is good enough for one day, don't you think?"

"If we've only a day, then arguing the point seems a waste of precious time."

"Exactly." She came to an abrupt halt in front of him. "I'm Cerasi, by the way."


	3. Chapter 3

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 3**

The tunnel system eventually yielded to a wide vault deep beneath street level, an intersection of four major passages surmounted by a reinforced roof. The hum of generators and thermal units was audible as a subliminal echo; there were scores of people present both in the duracrete chamber and in the adjacent arched corridors. A certain confidence, the pride of territorial possession, hung in the Force like a proud banner. This, then, was some kind of headquarters.

They were met by a tall, dark-haired man, one whose swinging gait and air of command marked him as a leader.

"Nield," Cersai addressed this person. "We have a visitor. From off world."

Nield was distinctly unimpressed. "Are you a spy for the Melida, or the Daan? Or maybe for the Trade Federation? No – don't tell me. Just get out."

Obi-Wan stepped up to the challenge; Neild's towering superiority in height no source of intimidation to him. "I am no spy; my business here is on behalf of the galactic Republic, not your people."

A pair of dark brows lowered over Nield's pale gold eyes. "And what does the useless, effete Republic want here?"

The padawan sent a suggestion of calm through the Force, though he could have predicted its inefficacy – these people were all of them strong-minded, hardened by decades of strife. "A matter of extradition."

Cerasi moved closer, piting her voice low. "You are making a scene, Nield. He's here under my protection. We can talk later."

Her counterpart scowled, but grudgingly acceded, a brief tenderness crossing his care-lined features as his eyes lit upon her. Obi-Wan noted the look and the sense of longing or regret that accompanied it.

"Come this way – let's join the mess hall. I'll make the introductions there." Cerasi promptly led him onward, into one of the side tunnels, wending their way toward another intersection.

"Nield is your leader."

"My second in command," Cerasi corrected him. "And we don't officially have leaders among the Young."

They halted. "The Young?"

"Well," she shrugged, leaning back against the graffiti-covered wall. "That's what the movement was called in the beginning. My parents were part of it… a youth rebellion, dedicated to peace. Kids from both sides fled down here, formed a community, launched protests, developed their own sub-culture… it's changed over the years. We're more of a guerilla band now, just surviving. And –" she snorted self-deprecatingly – "Most of us aren't so young anymore. It's hard to believe, but Nield and I are pushing forty. " She took a deep breath and studied him in the dim light of glow-rods set into the roof at regular intervals, clearly expecting some answer.

He could feel the weight of every passing year, the invisible pressure that made her presence so diamond-hard… but basic diplomatic courtesy forbade him to mention it. "Age is relative to experience."

Cerasi liked this reply. "True. You're older than you seem, aren't you? You've got that look in your eyes, but I bet you aren't more than eighteen standard."

"Nineteen."

"And why has the Republic sent a baby like you to a hell-hole like this? Are you on the run from the law? Or looking for trouble to drown your woes?"

He gaped. "Neither. I am a Jedi."

"Jedi," she repeated, wracking through memory for a mislaid scrap of information. "The Republic's peacekeepers? You're a little late, don't you think?"

"I'm not here to solve your world's problems," he admitted.

"Then what are you up to?" Her eyes narrowed, intuition bridging the gap with alarming accuracy. "You're looking for someone on the lam. You're here to kill a man, aren't you?"

He winced. Cerasi tilted her head to one side, pinning him beneath her appraising gaze. "But you aren't happy about it. Some kind of assassin you make, Obi-Wan. And an even worse peace-keeper if that's your idea of _justice."_

A deep centering breath. "My affairs are my own."

She looked at him wistfully. "Nothing belongs to anyone down here. You can never mention that fact again - or get out now. Nield is right : the Young don't have use for professional hit men."

His defensive protestations died on his lips. "Thank you for your hospitality," he said, with a humble bow.

Cerasi jerked her head in the direction of the dining hall and led the way on, in silence.

* * *

Obi-Wan was careful to make small talk during the communal meal, gravitating toward the small knot of those closer to his own age, and steering the conversation along technical and pragmatic lines. His hosts gladly welcomed him into their circle with the ready camaraderie of the barely adult, asking few questions and accepting his sudden appearance in their midst with no more than mild curiosity once it was clear he had been invited as a "friend of Cerasi's." Apparently there were smaller cells of Young scattered across the planet's surface, in less important locales; he was assumed to hail from one of these far-flung fraternities. While a small part of his attention was directed to their accounts of the power generators, water purification system, stolen comm circuits, and their plans to restore some of the scrapped vehicles they had scavenged from the city's battle fields, he was more or less free to thoroughly probe the Force for a sense of this underground community as a whole.

They were tired, many of them bitter, many of them exhausted, and all of them slightly lunatic, he decided – but none was deeply tainted with the hate he had felt on the surface. Their cause was salutary enough to protect them from the creeping plague of darkness that fueled Melida-Daan's perpetual war.

"Nield looks like hell today," a young man on his right observed. "Something's brewing."

"It's firstday, idiot. Just he doesn't go up for the rites doesn't mean he's forgotten."

"He changed the day the kids died. Him and Cerasi both. He'll get back to normal in a few days."

Obi-Wan fit the pieces of the puzzle together. "Cerasi and Nield lost their children to the war," he guessed.

"Yeah – bombing. Ten years ago now. Kinda broke them to pieces, but they're both good leaders still, so it doesn't matter."

"They are bondmates. Spouses?"

But this obvious conclusion earned a scoffing rejection. "What? We don't have that chisszzk here. What hole did you crawl out of, anyway?"

"I'm … shell shocked, they say."

This soothed any fears about his exoteric perspective. The first speaker straightened his spine, magisterially. "Look: what are the four roots of war, mate? Religion, government, private property, the nuclear family – and all the power structures developed to enforce those institutions. The Young reject all of it. Of course Cerasi and Nield aren't what-do-you-call-it? Bonded."

"Ah. Of course." He refrained from pointing out that many galactic cultures thrived despite the insidious threat of all four aforementioned deadly flaws, nor did he indulge in a comparison of such radical principles to the Code. He must not be distracted by the minutiae of these people's beliefs – his purpose here was other, and narrowly focused. "You know, I think I can solve that problem you mentioned with the transceiver equipment. I've some experience with similar systems. If you let me have a look at it…?"

But his hopes were swiftly dashed. "Nah. If Nield can't fix it, nobody can. He's a mechanical genius. But thanks."

An indifferent shrug. "Just a thought."

He would simply have to be patient, and wait for Dooku to contact him first.

* * *

He was given a stretch of broken pipeline in which to make his bed that night. Rolling his cloak beneath his head and enjoying the flow of warmth conducted through the curve from one of the Young's many hacked generators, he relaxed enough to filter out the flood of emotions and thoughts swirling at close quarters about him, and to take solitary refuge in his own thoughts, parsing out the day's discoveries into subject, predicate, and inessential qualifiers. Thus analytically splayed beneath his scrutiny, the Young appeared as a very temporary and useful alliance, nothing more.

He had not come to solve this world's problems.

In the midst of his brooding, a small bedraggled form appeared beside him in the gloom, a pair of soft paws kneading at his ribs.

"Hello there… what are you?"

The felix butted its head into his stomach and continued its rhythmic assault on his side. He tentatively touched the things' tufted ears, and flirted with the idea of letting it stay. Qui-Gon would certainly have – but no. He would not start collecting pathetic life forms as a maudlin tribute to the past. He had other matters to worry about.

"A word with you."

He rolled onto one elbow and raised both brows as Nield unceremoniously invaded his already tenuous privacy, curling up inside the rounded walls of the broken drain.

"Look," the uninvited visitor said, in a low tone obviously not meant to be overheard. "I don't know who you are or where you come from, but I'm no man's fool." He reached out and lifted the felix by its scruff. The animal seemed to recognize him, for it issued no protest. "Cerasi – she collects strays like this. Ever since…. Well. She does. But I know enough about the Jedi to know you have hidden claws. You don't fit in here with us."

"We have some things in common," Obi-Wan countered, neutrally. "I am grateful for the shelter, certainly."

"What do we have in common?" Nield sneered. "The Jedi are a religious Order, aren't they?"

"From a certain point of view."

"Listen: this war between Melida and Daan has been raging since before I was born. That's since _way_ before you were born, right? I'll tell you what started it: concern with things like ideals and spiritual concepts. Spirit and truth and morality and all the rest of that filthy chisszzk. Excuses to kill one another, to destroy what's real and important. You Jedi believe in some kinda mystical energy field, right? This-" he slapped his thigh, emphasizing the solidity of his flesh and bone – "this is just illusion or something, right? Better to die than to betray your sacred principles… better to kill than allow another to do so."

"We do not kill anyone in the name of –"

"Liar," Nield hissed at him, leaning closer in the darkness. "You came here to kill somebody, didn't you? Cerasi's got a gift, you know. She sees through people into their core. She told me what you are. She may think you can be saved, but I don't."

"Then your dispute would seem to lie with her, not me." He strove to contain his sarcasm within polite bounds, but failed.

Nield snorted bitterly. "Yeah, I don't have a chance in hell of arguing with that pretty mug of yours, do I?" He scooted backward toward the pipe's jagged opening. "Just get on with your job and get the hells out of here."

"That is the general idea," Obi-Wan responded, coolly.

When Nield had effected a full retreat, he dropped flat upon his back again and brooded upon the inexplicable eddies of _jealousy_ left in the man's wake, suddenly reconsidering his previous certainty that this was the best place for him to "run to ground."

Utopian fervor had a predictable habit of going sour over time, visionary fire of smoldering into sullen smoke. He sincerely hoped his tenure on this madhouse planet would be a short one.

* * *

_What are the great renunciations, Seeker?_

_That of sensual luxury, that of material possession, that of personal attachment. Poverty of spirit encompasses all three._

_These three renunciations are a form of death, for they sever us from the same thing, and thereby free us of their shackles. He who has nothing to lose has everything to gain, for he is not bound to the vagaries of change and fortune, needing and wanting, hoarding and tending. _

_Yes, Master. I remember this now… and yet…_

_You stumble upon the path. Which of these is your obstacle?_

_The last. I think… I cannot see how personal attachment is a chain binding us to the illusory. My heart cries out that this is false._

_Then we must teach it better, mustn't we?_


	4. Chapter 4

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 4**

He couldn't sleep.

So he didn't. Shrouded in his cloak, slipping like dusk over a silent world, he retraced the path upward to the surface, easily evading or mind-tricking the sentries on duty at the terminus of the Young's domain into believing all they heard was the whisper of a dying breeze.

The city was blackened, and yet still crawling with hate. The petty malice of its denizens slunk in gutters and alleys like vermin, floated on the still air, a toxic effluvia. Obi-Wan saw the snipers' positions in the Force, well before their night-vision goggles could lock onto his darting form; he sensed the potential ambushes ahead, changed paths, leapt over walls, traversed the broken remains of the city in random pattern, seeking for ... what?

The Force led him on, though, from Daan occupied territory, into Melida, and then another pocket of Daan. And then to a sort of front, a no-man's land where a scant few meters of street delineated the present war zone, the pitched strife of two peoples so locked in opposition they had forgotten its original cause. As Qui-Gon Jinn had drilled into his head, _anger - _ once flourishing upon bloodshed and memory- no longer needed a cause to continue growing. It was a self-feeding nuclear implosion like the death of a star, a thing without reason or limit.

He flattened himself against the cracked tiles of a rooftop when a squat figure appeared in the open space below, its rolling gait and squashed face an all too familiar sight. The Force spiked in affirmation. _Kar'Thon._

A moment later he had dropped in behind the diminutive assassin, one arm about the Darshiki's neck, strangling any argument, his boot kicking the tiny warrior's feet out from under him. They rolled backward together into the shelter of the west-facing wall, Kar'Thon cursing and spitting, thrusting angular elbows into his assailiant's midriff. If it were not for the unfair advantage of the Force, the tables might easily have been turned.

"_Quiet,"_ Obi-Wan commanded, shoving his unwiling vassal against the wall. One or two idle shots sounded in the street, the blasts ricocheting alarmingly near their heads. Both froze, waiting for the concealed marksmen to lose interest.

"Jedi karbuku! Get me killed, you will!"

Obi-Wan rubbed at a sore spot. "I rather expect it to be the other way round. What are you doing out here?"

"My job. Kriff off."

"Your business _is_ my business, remember?" The young Jedi thrust a hand beneath his tunics and pulled out the Darshiki's life-debt talisman, dangling it before the unfortunate assassin's face, then snatching it away before deft fingers could seize the object. "Where is he?"

A shrug. "Headquarters. I see him not much."

"And what is your job?"

A mutinous glare answered this. Grudgingly, the Darshiki coughed up more information. "Training soldiers. I got some, others got some. Pays good."

"Soldiers?" Why? Which side? And were not Melida and Daan more than versed in the art of war? It seemed unlikely that outside mercenaries would have much to teach the militia here. He had seen a ten year old boy patrolling the rooftop parapets, blaster rifle cocked over one shoulder with the blithe confidence of long experience. "What army?"

Kar'Thon spat and made a superstitious gesture with one scaled hand. "Fallen ones. But pays good."

The padawan filed this tidbit away. He would have to report to Dooku at the first opportunity. "I want to find him. When is he leaving headquarters next?"

The Darshiki bared his crooked teeth, mashed nostrils flaring. "Get me killed, you will."

"Not if I can help it. When and where?"

"Kriffing _pizzmah._"

"Your _debt, Kar'Thon."_ Much as such brutal tactics made his gut twist, there was sometimes no other option.

With a guttural exclamation, the small warrior admitted defeat. "Shipment coming tomorrow. Northeast sector. He might be there for unload. Maybe, maybe not."

A shipment? So supplies were regularly smuggled past the blockade. But by whom? And for whom? "I'll take a chance on it." It wasn't time yet to make his move… but the more information he had before that fateful moment, the better. And this revelation of secret armies and supply lines intrigued him. Something was very, very rotten here – a parasite had taken up its dwelling place in the half-rotted corpse of this planet.

His tiny friend pushed him away and ambled off into the shadows, melting into the urban jungle like a stunted native predator.

* * *

He was accosted by Cerasi the moment he returned to the Young's hiding place.

"And just what in hell's moons do you think you're doing?" she demanded, effectively blocking his progress down the main tunnel.

"Reconnaissance." One of his brows lifted. "I didn't come here on a _social_ call, you know."

"I _know_ why you came here," she snapped back, glowering at him. "But Nield doesn't – and neither do many of the others. Sneaking out at night looks an awful lot like espionage and potential betrayal. Our lives depend on not being found. Who saw you? Who followed you back here?"

"Nobody saw me," he retorted icily. "I am not incompetent. And with whom I met is my own business."

"Your business _is_ my business if you're sheltering here," Cerasi countered. "The Young don't have private property and we don't have private business, either. Out with it, or you're out, and I go back and eat my words. I'm not risking lives for you."

It was a minor diplomatic stand-off, and he knew well enough when to cede a minor defeat. His long term goal would not be impacted, and besides: he _trusted_ the fierce woman barricading the path ahead. "I met a contact. He had useful information about the person I am seeking."

Her eyes narrowed. "And I suppose you're going to go haring off after this lead, right? Listen: no private business among the Young. You want to stay with us, you need to be open about your comings and goings."

He tamped down a renewed surge of irritation. "I am not accustomed to submitting my actions to the review of a committee." The Jedi Council didn't… didn't _count._

Cerasi looked away, clearly reining in her own temper. "Gods," she addressed the wall on her left, "Are you all such haughty barves?"

"No." He grinned, shunting vexation into dark humor. "But they send those few who are where we will have maximum infuriating effect."

Some of her pique faded into the Force. The dingy tunnel echoed with her soft breath of laughter. "All right. A compromise. You tell _me_ where you're going and what you're up to. I won't pass it on unless it's of vital importance to the Young."

A dangerous concession to make; after all, this left the determination of _importance_ entirely in her hands. He shifted. "And what will Nield think of that?'

Cerasi's pale freckles stood out boldly against the rising color in her cheeks.. "He'll have to deal. We've had our disagreements in the past, and we'll have them again. Are you taking me up on the offer or am I reporting you as a possible traitor? You can find a home here among the Melida or the Daan. I bet you're _good_ at blending in when you want to."

But that would be foolish; in Cerasi he already had one established and willing ally. There was no need to squander resources. "Very well."

"Good." Her posture relaxed. "I guess we're both insomniacs. Come burn the midnight oil with me."

* * *

There was a squalid corner of the old sewers that the Young used as galley and dining hall; at this wee hour of the morning, it was conveniently unoccupied. Cerasi fished some battered cups and an antique caff-pot out of a rusty storage cupboard, and prepared a heady brew.

"I like it strong," she confessed. "Enough to get me through the entire next day."

Obi-Wan eyed the dark arjees skeptically. "I'm more of a tea drinker, actually…"

"None of that here." She tossed her fall of red hair over one shoulder and briskly set a steaming mug before him. "We live on what we can steal from the importers, and they don't deal in Core delicacies out this far."

"My contact mentioned shipments as well…. It must be risky to run the blockade."

Cerasi savored her first deep draught. "And the prices reflect it. Not that we pay – but both Melida and Daan have been trading with pirates for decades."

He frowned, watching a cream-colored froth of natural oils congeal atop the liquid. "Trading _what?"_ All-out warfare left no time for industry or agriculture. "Are there natural resources to barter?"

She snorted. "There used to be – but the mines and deep-crust reservoirs are exhausted. No, they've been dealing in sentient stock for generations."

"Slaves." The scent of the caff was bitter, harsh in his nostrils.

Cerasi watched him intently. "The Republic has been looking the other way or forty years, Obi-Wan. What did you _think_ funds a civil war like this? Soldiers don't have time to manufacture goods… but there's one expensive black market item that only takes a few minutes to make."

He shoved the cup aside. "There are so few children here."

"And now you know why." Her acid tone softened, and one hand crept across the table to touch his. He shied from the contact, taking a deep centering breath.

"There is a shipment arriving tomorrow. In the northeast sector."

"And you're going to meet it, scope out the situation."

That was all he had been mandated to do – all that his mission required. They had not come to solve this planet's problems, nor to save anyone. And yet…

"If the Young launch a raid on the supplies, it would create a useful distraction."

Her eyes widened as comprehension dawned.

"You take the merchandise, I'll take the payment," he pressed. "There's room for a few more down here, isn't there?" An engaging smile.

Cerasi returned the smile, a ray of purest admiration shafting through the Force. "I'll talk to Nield."

They sipped at the beverage in silence, Cerasi swiftly draining her cup, Obi-Wan merely playing with his. "When you mentioned your _fallen ones,"_ he ventured after a time, "You meant those who have died. Correct?"

She nodded grimly. "Yes. Why?"

But there were some things he wasn't ready to share… and besides, it might have been merely a misused idiom, one of Kar'Thon's inexpert turns of phrase. "Nothing."

* * *

The comm signal was badly fractured by the subterranean pipes, but a few delicate adjustments threshed out Dooku's voice from the deafening interference patterns.

"Yes, Master. According to Kar'Thon, he may meet a shipment coming in from offworld – a freighter, I imagine, scheduled to dock in the northeast sector."

The Sentinel's reply was a string of broken beads. "No need for…. Determine his … more important to locate the headquarters and…. reliable information."

Sensing the dubiety undergirding this last fragment, Obi-Wan raised his voice, enunciating clearly. "Kar'Thon has been reliable thus far. I think we may proceed." Even if his exact words did not transmit, the senior Jedi would sense his general intent through the Force.

"…and which side have you chosen to grace with your patronage?"

That was more complicated. "Neither, master. There is a resistance movement – underground alliance. They call themselves the Young."

The next burst of static entirely obscured Dooku's response, but the Force carried a certain mocking contempt within its supernal currents. Likely some perjorative remark about the folly of _youth._

He brushed it aside, in no mood for banter. "Are you aware that the Melida and Daan have been dealing in slaves all these years? They pay for pirated goods with their own children, or else prisoners of war."

A telling pause. "A stagnant pool breeds scum…. Do not allow…. Distraction."

"We should at least report to the Senate…. Even if this world is under such strict interdiction."

An even longer hesitation, pregnant with reprimand. "We are not officially here, _Padawan._. Mind your place."

He was supremely grateful that the link was not via hologram. A hot breath of frustration escaped his lips. "Yes, Master." Not that Dooku would miss the rebellious undertone there – but that was a matter to discuss later.

When the transmission ended, he shoved the commlink back in its belt pouch with uncharacteristic vehemence, and curled into a ball to sleep away the cold hours before dawn.


	5. Chapter 5

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 5**

_And what is death, Seeker?_

_Some say the destruction of the body, others the extinction of self. Perhaps it is both._

_The body is of no account, but the self a more difficult thing to grasp. There are those who hold it is an illusion, a concatenation of habits and impulses, nothing real._

_I know this argument, Master. It is an old one – the deconstruction of the ego. Who are we, it is asked, but the sum of our desires and memories and preferences and fears, a bundle of nervous habits and accidental circumstances? When we look for a permanent substrate beneath these mutable aspects, there is nothing left. And so there is no true self._

_You do not believe this, I perceive. But then how would you define the self? Without the insubstantial particulars of time and place, and personal, animal whim, what defines your lasting identity?_

_Commitment, my Master. Commitment to purpose: to the Light, the Dark, compassion, power, honor, truth, new life, whatever it is that defines a soul most truly._

_Ah. You begin to see. But not all are so dedicated._

_I am no judge of others. _

_Wisely said. Absolute dedication of spirit is the only undying root of self, the anchorline to immortality. Without it, the mind is but ashes in the wind, much as the body. Be sure that you are deeply moored in your Purpose – for without it, you are yourself nothing but death embodied._

* * *

"May I be of assistance?"

Nield glanced up from his awkward supine position beneath the decrepit fighter's hull, brow furrowing. "You know anything about ships like this?"

Obi-Wan interpreted the challenge as a partial truce between them, and stepped forward, running an open hand along the rusted starboard wing. "Not precisely like this – I would guess this model is older than I am… but I have studied astromechanics extensively. It's part of our standard training."

The Young's second leader scooted out from beneath the battered hulk and stood, wiping his hands down on a rag. "You attend a University then?"

The padawan paced round the fighter, peering into the disabled thruster array. "Of sorts, I suppose. I have a good friend in a special pilot program – he's shown me a few things. Where did you find this?" he added, casually.

"Out past the boundaries. Had it nearly twenty years now," the older man proudly declared. "I was lucky to find it, too – generally Melida or Daan scavenging parties snatch up any scrap. Of course it was lying there long before I discovered it. Why?"

Obi-Wan vaulted lightly into the cockpit, ducking beneath the half-open canopy. There had been too many ion burns and oxidation stains upon the hull to leave any distinguishing insignia intact – but the familiar arrangement of console components confirmed his dreadful guess. "This ship – it's one of ours."

Nield stood tiptoe on the ladder. "Jedi, you mean?"

"Yes. Republic diplomatic corps, anyway. But they don't use starfighters. This is a hyperdrive enabled single pilot transport." He had a bad feeling that it had belonged to one of the last ambassadors sent here before the galactic legislature had doomed Melida-Daan to stew in its own hatred forevermore – the murdered Jedi he had read about in the briefing materials. Even now, he could detect the faint trace of a Force signature on the controls, a lingering feel of …_incense_ that shied from conscious detection like a furtive beast disappearing into the shadows of the past.

"You okay?"

He snapped out of the half-trance, and offered Nield a reassuring smile. He sensed that the man could be a doughty friend, if only he could be persuaded of his interlocutor's good intentions. "Look," he said. "I'm told you are a mechanical genius. I'm afraid the intricacies of this may be a bit past my skill – but I think I can connect you to the technical specs."

A direct hit. Nield's amorphous distrust solidified into a hardened resistance, and then shattered beneath the hammer blow of hope. "Gods. You're kidding."

"No. Comms are unreliable down here, but if there was a way to stay on the surface for a bit, I can manage it." The Republic shuttle on which he and Dooku had arrived would have the basic tech manuals for most standard vessels stored in the shipboard database. He could easily download the relevant ones to his commlink.

Nield whistled between his teeth and turned a circle in place, thinking it over. "Yeah. With a manual, I could do it. The hell of it is trying to figure this out without any diagrams…I try to keep us up to date," he abruptly inserted. "I've stolen all the new techs when they come in, studied them… there's just so much to do, surviving. And there's never any respite from the fighting and killing – we wouldn't be in the dark ages otherwise."

"You've done an admirable job," Obi-Wan told him, infusing his voice with sincerity. "And the others respect your leadership greatly."

Mollified, and quickly warming to his guest, Nield started neatly stacking microtools and fusion cutters into their cases. "There are a couple sheltered spots up top. We could risk ten, fifteen minutes. Is that enough time?"

"I hope so."

And they were off, their newly cemented alliance a fragile but welcome construct amid the wreckage of these people's lives.

* * *

They squatted beneath the scant refuge of a blasted out hospital lobby, Nield on lookout with a long-range blaster propped across his knees, Obi-Wan diligently fiddling with his commlink's transceiver settings. It took an agonizingly long time to establish a link with the ship's computer, and even longer to download the relevant holofiles. Every gust of wind of skittering dust-cloud set their nerves on edge; the Force's warnings of danger no help here where bloodlust seeped in every nook and cranny.

"Got it?" Nield edgily inquired.

"I think so. Hold on – I'm waiting for the last spec manual. You may need to disable the hyperdrive permanently. Sometimes the fuel pressurizer is compromised. If you do it incorrectly, the whole system will blow."

"And rad poisoning is the last thing we need."

"Exactly."

The easy camaraderie of the trenches drew them into a strange intimacy, a fleeting brotherhood that transcended age and origin. Obi-Wan felt the scales tip in the direction of trust, and risked making a proposition. "Nield, have you ever considered the possibility of evacuating your people? The Young, I mean."

Nield ran a hand through his thinning hair, the lines of worry and hard living not entirely marring what must have once been a striking face. "Sure. And I'm thankful the opportunity has never arisen."

"I might be able to help. I can petition the Council to authorize emergency aid. Your case is clear cut – a humanitarian mission could be launched, to get you out. The Republic can establish refugee status for you on another world –"

"No," Nield cut across the tempting vignette. "No. I told you I've thought it out. And the answer is _hell, no_. I would never condone such a course of action."

Genuinely surprised, the young Jedi rocked back on his heels and met the man's gaze squarely. "You are responsible for protecting them. Why not help facilitate a new start, rather than holding out here indefinitely?"

"Are you finished?"

They scrambled back into the shelter of the tunnels, heading back to headquarters. "Look," Nield reopened the subject after a few minutes' moody silence. "I get that you are Jedi. This might not make sense to you. But it's about commitment. If we ran… got out… then we'd just be exiles, trying to make our way in the universe. Flotsam, stringing it together best we can. That's not a life. This is our home, My home. We've lost more loved ones than most can count, all of em buried here, beneath the ruins. You're young still, like we were... back then it was all about ideals, passion and ambition and big words. But that only gets you so far. When the going gets tough, ideals won't see you through. Only _commitment._ That's what makes a man who he is, not what he believes. It's what you _die_ for, what you _live_ for no matter what."

"There isn't such a great difference between the two."

Nield stopped, leaning against a dank wall. "I'll tell you what I would have told my own… well, what you need to hear. It's like a marriage. At first, you're in love. Madly in love. That carries you through thick and thin. But sometimes, you know…. Loss. Hardship. Getting tired. Seeing too much. Betrayal, even. Temptation. You maybe don't feel so in love anymore. But you stick it out, because you've got _commitment._ Okay? Melida-Daan is where we belong."

"You mean your ideals are no longer your guiding light?"

Nield shrugged. "Don't get me wrong. That's a good place to start. Plenty of the others still have em." He tapped his head, then his chest. "But eventually, when you've lost kriffing everything, it comes down to this." His hand moved lower. "Guts and balls."

Obi-Wan's brows rose, but he nodded. However crudely put, there was doubtless a grain of wisdom in Nield's statement.

The older man slapped him on the shoulder. "Don't tell Cerasi," he said. "She hates it when I get bitter. Gritty grumps, she calls it. Cerasi's not human, I swear," he added, wistfully, his tone softening to that of a man who was still, despite his protestations, very much in love. "She's something else entirely."

* * *

Cerasi's enthusiasm had run like molten ore into the casting mold of his purpose, hardening to a steely resolve. By midday, she was accompanied by a score of seasoned conspirators, their own fervor stoked to red-hot pitch by her effortless charisma.

"We're ready when you are," she informed him, eyes shining. "We're old hands at making a raid. What I'm worried about is your part."

"Leave that to me."

"They'll have the merchandise heavily guarded. And if it's pirates, they'll bring their own security."

He flashed a grim smile. "So I assumed. I'll handle it – you get the supplies, I'll take care of the captives."

Cerasi's face shone with something more than fanatic light. He thought he could discern the wavering edge of intense admiration in that gaze, and cast his own eyes downward, mildly disturbed.

There was only one other woman in the galaxy who could _burn_ like that, an inward star kindling in a translucent lantern, the Force's clarion purity clothed in pale flesh, crowned in silken glory of gold.

Siri would have fiercely approved the plan, and Dooku's reservations be damned. The thought brought a smile, and the smile a memory of their last fateful encounter.. and its disastrous aftermath. He drew his hood over his face, a reflexive habit with its own ingrained set of meanings in another culture, far far from this desperate world.

"Hey," Cerasi protested, "What's that supposed to mean?" Her hands gently lowered the fabric, settling it over his shoulders again. She looked up at him, hands on hips, mouth turned downward in consternation. "Are you okay?"

All of which was a blatant trespass upon his closely guarded privacy. Something in his look must have conveyed this to her, for she capitulated quickly. "All right – you can have your own thoughts. Just tell me we're still going forward with this."

"Oh yes," he murmured, shoving aside regret and allowing cold resolve to usurp its throne. "We're going ahead with the plan."

He led the way out, Cerasi and her hand-picked scouts at his heels.

What Dooku would say if and when he discovered this detour from the high road to their singular ambition, he did not wish to imagine. But it was better to ask forgiveness than permission, an aphorism often espoused by the Sentinel himself.

And this was a matter of vital compassion, a commitment more eminent than any other, and needing only the Force's approval.


	6. Chapter 6

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 6**

The northeastern sector of the city was an ideal locale for receiving shipments; warfare in years bygone had flattened the area to a uniform plain of rubble, the grim evidence of a heavy-power sonic disruption blast or perhaps even primitive nuclear weapons. There was no saying to what depths of depravity Melida-Daan's suicidal self-immolation may have reached. Obi-Wan surveyed the flat clearing through a pair of borrowed macrobinoculars where he lay at the ridge of a collapsed building, Cerasi and the Young's raiding party crouched silently behind him.

"There's a ship descending from upper atmosphere," he said, adjusting the focus to track the growing object's hull as it drew near. There were several known pirating rings in this sector, and he was familiar enough with their insignia to be able to identify –

"No," he breathed.

Cerasi crept up beside him, face smudged with grit from their clandestine journey through forgotten alleys and sewage routes. "What?"

He double checked the 'nocs, but the image did not waver or resolve into any more palatable form. He handed the instruments over, disgusted and unsettled. "That's a Trade Federation ship – not a pirate vessel."

"So?" Her brows rose as she locked the magnifiers onto the approaching freighter. "One set of brigands is as good as another."

"You don't understand. The Federation is a quasi-independent guild, but they are still subject to Republic supervision, and most their clients are Republic principalities. If they are involved in illegal weapons smuggling, and in _slave trade, _ then.."

"Then what?" Cerasi shrugged. "The galaxy's full of corrupt barves."

"Yes, but.." He stopped mid-objection. Vertiginous in the wake of rapidly expanding intuition, he took a deep centering breath. The suspicion that this heinous violation of both law and ethics was tacitly approved, purposefully overlooked by some Senate committee, condoned by the same governing body that had condemned this world to slow death in the first place, was just that: a suspicion.

_Truth,_ the Force murmured, insistent.. _Search your feelings._

"Blast it." He didn't have the luxury to pursue such insight– he was here to achieve a very specific objective, not to solve this world's problems, certainly not to uncover new ones. He ruthlessly thrust the suggestion of broader treachery aside and focused on the present moment. He could at least save a handful of victims today, and perhaps discover the exact contents of that freighter's cargo hold.

And if he were fortunate, get a glimpse of Syfo-Dyas, the focal point of his determination. Let the traitorous former Shadow but show himself, give some clue to his means and ends here…

"All right, let's move," Cerasi hissed at her loyal comrades. "You know the routine."

They scrambled away, quiet and efficient as only jaded guerillas could be. "Good luck," she whispered over her shoulder at the young Jedi, her eyes resting on him a moment longer than needful.

_There is no luck. _ He crept to the edge of their vantage point, crouched behind a jutting fragment of masonry as the air shook beneath the freighter's heavy repulsors. The massive hulk settled upon the ruined courtyard like some lumbering aquatic monster sinking to a primordial ocean's floor. A hot effluvia washed over him from the drives, and then the inevitable spattering of vapor as the moisture in the air condensed. His nose wrinkled at the tang of ion-heated metal and the stink of whatever exotic fusion core fuel the Nemoidians employed. Pressure pistons hissed, hatches unsealed, magnetic moorings were clamped in place. The main ramp was lowered with a pretentious and dramatic flare characteristic of the vessel's owners.

A foursome of the reptilian merchants descended, flanked by a clanking bodyguard of spindly droids. Obi-Wan squinted down at these metallic escorts; vaguely humanoid in design, they marched stiffly at their masters' sides, armed with blaster rifles, their conical heads twitching about atop spindle-necks, blunt feet drumming a staccato rhythm upon the textured ramp's surface. The entire squadron came to a halt beneath the shelter of the bulbous freighter's massive hull, expectant.

There – across the way: the welcoming party. Men and a few women in drab uniforms both blue and grey lurched across the tarmac, almost haphazardly, their gait suggesting drunkenness or severe fatigue. Between them, shackled and despondent, were a dozen prisoners – _younglings, _ one or two barely waist-high – and at the head of this weird procession, the stunted gargoyle form of a Darshiki warrior.

"Kar'Thon," the young Jedi growled.

There was no sign of Syfo-Dyas, no foul eddying in the Force to indicate his presence, but Obi-Wan knew this was meaningless. The ex-Sentinel was so adept at shielding that he might stand on the pavement below in open sight and yet not be _visible, _ if he sensed a foe in the vicinity.

Focus. The Nemoidians were now speaking to Kar'Thon, gesturing into the hold of their vessel, presumably haggling over prices. There was much waggling of heads, the excitement threatening to overturn the precarious balance of the reptilians' elaborate headdresses. Obi-Wan could not help but smirk at one or two of the absurd black hats. Even among the effete politicos and aristocrats of the Core, there were few fashion follies to rival the ostentatious non-functionality of traditional Nemoidian headgear.

At last, some kind of compromise seemed to be reached; a convoy of droids was sent back into the freighter to retrieve the goods. They reemerged a few minutes later pushing a hover-palette laden with heavy shipping crates. Kar'Thon and his escort proceeded to pry open the nearest and make a cursory examination of the contents. A nod, a curt order, and a pleased and simpering bow on the part of the tall black robed traders, and the deal seemed to be closed.

The uniformed guards roughly pushed their small prisoners forward; the droids leveled blasters at the living merchandise, a stern warning against resistance, and the parties exchanged a final few words before dividing again into two groups.

At which point chaos erupted.

One of the freighter's docking prongs exploded, a ripple of displaced electro-magnetic energy clawing over the hull in a paroxysm of ghostly wrath. The Nemoidians cowered, shouting at their automata to protect them as the ponderous hull careened sideways a bit, lifting the edge of the ramp off the platform. A staged crossfire broke out, blaster shots flying wildly from either side of the square, and was swiftly joined by genuine fire from the inevitable snipers and scouts hidden in the surrounding buildings. The Nemoidians, unable to clamber back into their vessel, huddled shrieking beneath their massive ship's shadow, while Kar'Thon's group abandoned the palette and its goods, diving for cover behind what scarce bits of girder and rubble still lay scattered over the makeshift port.

Obi-Wan was sailing down in a single graceful leap before the first random blaster shot found its mark, sending a dark uniformed soldier toppling from a rooftop hideout. His boots hit the uneven ground, and the momentum of his fall brought him rolling on one shoulder beneath the volley of protective fire laid down by the droids. He surged forward, both 'sabers spitting to brilliant life, charging into the inept knot of mechanical soldiers in a whirl of blue light, batting blasts away from his body and out into the square, back into the ship's underside, straight into the littered ground. Teeth bared, a fierce chuckle welling unbidden into his throat, aware that _restraint_ was not needed here where his adversaries were mere lumps of circuit and servo, he carved the pathetic defenders into scrap, _sai cha, sai cha – _heads rolling – _sai mok,_ and again, the mark of severance, a brutal and normally forbidden _mou kei –_ many limbs at once, dismembered bits showering about him- a savage downward _sai mok, _ the vertical severance, ugly and satisfying –

The last droid he simply _crushed _ into a ball, the Force spreading molten through his veins, explosive and burning. He panted, the haze at vision's edge dissipating. The Nemoidians' were curled into pleading balls, begging mercy in their very postures – and alongside them the younglings cringed, tears staining their faces, the smallest among them riveted in place by sheerest terror.

_Sweet Force._

He deactivated the weapons. "Come with me!"

But they writhed backward, even as the firefight beyond the shadow of the skewed hull blazed about them. He saw _fear_ in so many pair of wide eyes, and an equal fear lanced through his own chest. _They're afraid of me. I'm a –_

No time to think, to consider the implications, to regret or apologize or explain. He held out a hand, gathering all their trembling minds in a single shepherding loop of influence, impressing upon them an overriding need, just enough to break through the walls of incapacitating panic. "You need to come with me."

The one Nemoidian who attempted to follow, bulging eyes glazed and distant, he threw back among his comrades, where they sprawled in an inelegant heap, one or two headdresses flattened beneath their ungainly bodies. The children hustled forward, compelled by utter fear and the Force to obey, pliant to his command. He drove them before him, back into the shelter of the nearest walls, where two if the Young waited.

"Cerasi's pinned on the other side!" one of them hollered, seizing a stumbling child into his arms. "We can't get her out!"

Instantly, Obi-Wan dove back into the fray, slipping into the heartbeat's breadth between flying shots, soaring over, rolling beneath, coming up hard against Kar'Thon, who single-handedly kept the Young's last pocket of guerillas at bay, sending a steady stream of poison-tipped darts at them, the whistling projectiles issuing from his thin dart tube one after another, while his underlings showered down a barrage of containing shots from two other angles.

"Stop!" he commanded, seizing the Darshiki by the scruff.

In the next instant, they were locked in hand to hand combat, writhing upon the stony ground. A blast shattered a rock near their heads, slicing debris cutting into skin, leaving burning welts. One of the tiny assassin's darts buried itself in his opponents arm; the Darshiki himself came up hard against the jutting corner of a broken pillar, a hand about his throat.

"_Stop. Retreat," _Obi-Wan snarled, releasing the battle-frenzied assassin.

Kar'Thon spat expressively, uttered a string of abusive obscenities, and signaled his minions to cease fire.

Bodies darted in the shadows, last shots were squeezed off - and the square was left in a fog of blaster discharge and fear, bodies strewn upon the rocks, skewed twists of blue or grey. Droid components had skittered to the very edges of the arena. Men shouted in the distance.

"Go, fool Jedi!" The Darshiki hollered at him. "Idiot boy! Get us both killed, you will – go! See this? He will _know."_

Obi-Wan ducked his head once, biting back his own curse. He had left a signature here plain for anyone to see: lightsaber battle produced unmistakable scars, the fused edges of the droids' limbs and torsos ample testament to the manner of their demise. The shipping crates had been overturned, one or two ripped apart by blaster fire. Several were missing entirely, thanks to Cerasi's determined raiding party. The Nemoidians were still huddled beneath their ship, jabbering in their own tongue.

Obi-Wan took one last look at the carnage and destruction he had wrought, fought back a guttural cry, and fled the scene.

* * *

_Some speak of battling against the self, of defeating it, castigating it and subjugating it._

_True, And what do you think of this?_

_That they refer to the false self, the ego and its lures – passion, ambition, greed, attachment, all that which serves as distraction from true purpose and commitment. _

_Very good, Seeker, but there is another false self besides this fleeting one. There is a Dark self as well, rooted as deeply as one's commitment. It mirrors your every step, haunts the Path to the very summit. There is no escape from this shadow-self, for it is the penumbra of the true one. And only in the last extremity can it be overthrown._

_In the trial of spirit. Master?_

_Even that is but a temporary setback. Our own shadows cling to us until the final day of reckoning. Until our death._

_Then death is to be welcomed as an ultimate victory._

_You begin to understand, Seeker._


	7. Chapter 7

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 7**

Solitude was elusive beneath the surface; the Young seemed to occupy every available nook and cranny of their labyrinthine domain. It took him a solid half-hour to locate a private scrap of shadow in which to meditate, and another hour for Cerasi to hunt him down and invade upon his self imposed exile.

She stood hesitant outside the curved threshold of his chosen stretch of fractured drain pipe, the pulse of her faint innate connection with the Force enough to unwittingly project a measure of astonishment at his behavior, curiosity about his present semi-prostrated position, and a certain trepidation at the prospect of disturbing him.

"I- I'm sorry," she murmured, her whisper echoing against the tunnel's cold curve. "I didn't mean to interrupt you… I thought perhaps – you seemed upset. Is there anything I can do to…?"

He did not lift his forehead from its position pressed against the hard curve of stone floor. "No. Forgive me – this is a private matter."

But Cerasi, who had been raised her whole life in the mores and customs of a tiny reactionary community, did not take the hint. He could hear the rasp of cloth as she slid down against the wall nearby, settling in to wait.

_For Force's sake._ But perhaps this was just the humiliation he deserved. After all, nothing happened by accident, and if the just punishment for his loss of control was a forced confession of his shortcomings to an outsider, then so be it. Releasing a long cleansing breath to quell his own inner arrogance, he raised himself into a kneeling posture and regarded her with a chagrined resignation.

"I've never seen anyone fight like that," she observed, levelly. "And believe me, I've seen a lot."

It had not been meant to cause pain, but the remark passed between his ribs anyhow, a sharp reminder of his failing. He closed his eyes briefly. "I am sorry that you saw it."

She tipped her head back against the concave wall. "You're a trained killer. More than any of us, I mean. That kind of skill …. I don't have to know anything about it to know it takes a lifetime to acquire. You're some kind of special operative, aren't you?"

The word _peacekeeper_ longed to form itself upon his lips, but in all conscience he could not claim that title for his own. Not when he had veered so perilously close to the Dark. "I'm only a student," he deflected the inquiry. "Do not judge the Order by my standard."

In the dim lighting of the tunnels, the subtle depredations of time were erased, smoothed away. Cerasi was still a beautiful woman, a fine-edged blade. Her eyes wandered over the stained roof close above them, tracing a hairline crack in the dull surface. "What do you mean?" she urged him, softly. "I can tell you're upset. And we don't let things fester down here. It's not healthy for anyone. Dangerous, in fact."

He exhaled again. The Light was not a nursemaid, and it would not make this easy for him. It demanded his penitence on display for all to see. "I – your world is saturated in negative emotions. I should know better than to relax my control. What you saw was reprehensible, a manifestation of the Dark side. I did not fight with serenity, from a deep center; that was enjoyment of power and destruction. I should be …" he shook his head, words failing him. He should _know better._ What had overcome him? Where had all his years of training gone?

"Do you want to translate that into Basic for the rest of us?"

What could be more straightforward? "I violated the basic tenets of the Code. " He grasped his 'sabers hilts. "I should lay these aside _now_ if I were not still duty bound to complete my mission." He let his chin drop against his collarbone and closed his eyes. There it was: the blunt truth. Let Cerasi declare him shriven if she wished – inwardly the brand of guilt still throbbed, leaving indelible testimony to his mistake. Beware the Dark side, Jedi.

But she did not offer ready absolution, perhaps understanding that it was not hers to grant. "Look… even if you somehow broke your own rules, we're very grateful. Those children… you've saved them from a horrible existence. You can't regret that."

He shook his head. "Of course not." Though the stricken expressions on their faces would haunt him for some time, as would the nagging suspicion that their new life here among the Young was itself doomed to be nasty, brutish, and short.

Seeming to reads his thoughts, Cerasi leaned forward, fingertips brushing his knee. "We're going to welcome them into the circle tonight – a celebration of sorts. People will dance and play _borine_ and _taro,_ and sing. Will you join us? They might not be so intimidated if you showed a softer side."

He frowned. Blast it if she didn't know how to negotiate as well as any Jedi. "I should spend the night in solitary vigil," he protested. "In order to –"

"And Nield wanted your opinion on the contents of those crates. They were full of… things. Not food or weapons at all."

Interest piqued, he looked up. "_Things_?"

She lifted her hands helplessly. "We have no idea – but you might be able to identify them. Cylindrical stasis containers… maybe medical supplies. We're hoping some kind of bacta. That would be fantastic. Well worth the effort and risk."

"I'm no medical expert," he cautioned her.

"You don't say." Cerasi's lips parted in a teasing grin. "You're looking a little peaked. You sure you didn't get grazed by a blaster bolt or something?"

He smiled ruefully. "A scratch – one of the Darshiki's darts…but don't worry, I'm more or less immune."

She regarded him quizzically. "To poison in general?"

"No. I've built a resistance to this particular one. It's a long story."

Cerasi pushed up against the wall, knees cracking. "Ow,"" she laughed. "Come on. Everyone's waiting for the hero to return… and you're keeping me from tending those poor little ones." She slid an arm through his elbow and tugged. "We did a good thing today – let's celebrate."

Perceiving that he would be afforded no more privacy until he cooperated, he allowed himself to be shepherded back to the main living quarters, Cerasi keeping a firm hold on his arm all the way back through the sprawling tunnel system.

And for some reason, he could not muster enough resentment to resist her gentle bullying.

* * *

Nield sent his handful of assistants away when Obi-Wan entered the makeshift warehouse, a disused bunker or storage locker deep beneath the surface.

"There you are," he grunted. "You're the talk of the town, you know. Laser swords, eh? Against blasters?" He jerked his head at the 'saber hilts on his companion's belt. "Wondered if those were weapons."

"What was in the crates?" the young Jedi inquired, firmly directing the conversation away from the topic of combat.

"You tell me." Nield tossed a heay metallic cylinder in his direction.

The object was heavy and smooth, and sealed at both ends with vacuum tabs. He shook it gently, feeling the slosh of a gelatinous substance within.

"Think it's bacta?"

Obi-Wan shook his head. "This is very unusual packaging for bacta. This is a stasis tube – to contain either radioactive or biohazardous substances. My guess would be _weapon,_ not medical supplies."

Neild's worn face paled. "Gods. Now they're importing bioweapons."

"Perhaps." The Force was muddy, swirling uneasily about the canister, but not in the way it would if the contents had been deadly. On the other hand, his connection to the universal energy was _compromised_ here, tinged with the pervasive darkness of the planet. Would he be so certain of evil, even if he held it in his hand? "I don't know."

"Should we open one?" Nield licked his lips, glancing at the door to be sure ot was sealed. "We have some protective gear…it would be good to know what we're dealing with if this is the latest threat."

Obi-Wan exhaled slowly. He was not here to solve this world's problems… "Blast it," he muttered. How could he possibly turn his back on these people? "Yes," he decided. "We should see what's inside." A pause. "I'll do it. I might be able to – well. I have certain advantages."

To his relief, Nield did not argue. He merely rummaged in a pack and withdrew an outdated respirator and face-mask, and some textured mechanic's gloves. "Best we've got."

Wordlessly, the padawan accepted the flimsy safeguards and withdrew his knife from its boot sheath. The vacuum seals yielded easily beneath the Vespari steel blade. He cautiously removed the cap and sent a questing tendril of the Force inside the narrow confines of the cylinder. Neild offered him a shallow basin; into this he quickly tipped the gelatinous contents.

Milky white goo. Not bacta certainly.

"What is it?"

He raised his brows. What indeed? "Bantha snot," he guessed. The Force rippled and writhed, sending a spike of apprehension up his spine, but revealing nothing. He passed hand over the strange slop, stirring its depths without touching, but the action revealed nothing.

"Do you have a microspec?" he asked.

"Well… I've got some macronocs I reversed the regulator lens on – think that might work?" Nield was hunched beside him now, staring into the small puddle of white goo as though seeking his fortune in a scrying glass. When his companion nodded, he dashed off to fetch the instruments.

Obi-Wan scowled over the containing tube, noting the guild marking along the seam. The manufacturer was unknown to him, but the patenting code was not. He had seen it before. "Arbor Industries," he hissed, heart plummeting into his gut even as his pulse quickened in anger. This was not standard pirate merchandise, and he would bet his 'sabers that the shipment had been commissioned specifically by Syfo-Dyas.

When Nield returned with the hacked macro-nocs, he hastily dialed them to maximum setting and scrutinized the mysterious glop through their magnifying filters. "Nothing. We need to make a slide."

They smeared the substance on a sliver of transparent flimsi and tried again. The macronocs were ungainly and it was near impossible to narrow in on the focusing field without using the Force to hold them steady. At last, his minute adjustments brought the wavering image into crisp delineation.

"…What in the _blazes…!"_

Nield could barely contain himself. "What is it? What can you see?"

Obi-Wan stared, and swallowed, nauseated. "The surrounding medium is some kind of plastoid – I can see regular geometrical matrixes, those are manufactured – and blood plasma corpuscles, at least I'm fairly sure." He needed Bant to be certain, but he had studied basic biology in Temple, and the cells were readily recognizable. And then…" He took a breath, lip curling over his teeth. "There are… droids. Nano-droids, I think they're called. They look like parasites, almost. There are… well, there must be thousands,." A hand swept over the emptied cylinder, the crates in their corner. "Millions. Billions. Trillions. Force – what is he up to?"

He dropped the nocs from his eyes and met Nield's appalled and yet uncomprehednihg gaze. "He? Who are you talking about?" the older man asked, bemused.

"The man I'm looking for." The man he had come here to _kill._ The Force drew nearer, a looming thunderhead. Lightning flickered in its depths, portentous, inviting Unifying vision. Obi-Wan wrenched his attention back to the present moment. No. Not now.

Nield pointed to the pallid soup in its sterile dish. "That's meant to go into a bloodstream," he said. "That's why the plasma base. It's a bioweapon. We've got to destroy it. This and the rest – I don't care if Melida or Daan started it, this could mean the end of all of us. Doomsday."

Obi-Wan nodded, sizing up the herculean task in his mind. All out assault on Syfo-Dyas' stronghold had not been in the plan… but neither had rescuing potential slaves. He was already far out of line. A deliberate calming breath. "We need to talk."

"With Cerasi. After the party tonight." Nield clasped his shoulder. "You were meant to come here. To help us." A warmth of gratitude suffused the churning Force. "Thank the gods, even though I don't believe in any of the useless barves.."

Obi-Wan merely nodded, privately teetering on the edge of being emphatically sick.

He had a very, very bad feeling about this.


	8. Chapter 8

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 8**

_Imagine this, Seeker: a climber strives for the perilous summit of a great mountain. At the top lies the attainment of his goal, the pinnacle of his destiny. Below him are many others, also struggling to scale the cliffs. He sees them falter, stumble, nearly fall. And yet if he turns back to render aid there is a great chance he will never reach the heights himself, and so fail._

_Thus do the two great mandates counterbalance one another, tormenting us upon a rack of indecision. You tell me: which should the Climber choose?_

…_._ _I do not know, Master. Or I have forgotten._

_I think your heart urges you in one direction, your mind in another. Do not be discouraged; this question is one which, when answered, unlocks the door of ultimate wisdom. Be patient and let it sink deep into your awareness, until you ask it with each breath: which shall take precedence - Purpose or Compassion?_

* * *

The Young's ad hoc celebration was well under way by the time they arrived; as promised, self-appointed minstrels played ardently upon _borine_ and _taro, _ arpeggios of merry folk tunes blending with the swell and murmur of voices. In one corner, the abject group of rescued younglings clustered, wide eyes taking in the scene with longing and uncertainty, bodies pressed close together in a knot of gangly limbs and unkempt hair. Obi-Wan sent a calming wave of the Force in their direction, a gust of impalpable warmth much like that the crèche-masters in the Temple might once upon a time have used to soothe a roomful of fractious Force-sensitive toddlers. He smiled when the woeful little convocation relaxed, one or two faces even registering a faint smile of enjoyment as some of the sprightlier members of the party began a reeling sort of dance about the perimeter of the hall.

"Go eat something," Cerasi commanded. "You look like you could use it."

The Young had no funds to spare and no access to dainties or luxuries – but what comestibles and hard rations they had recently managed to steal from their foes they had set out banquet-style in honor of the occasion. Inured to long periods without food during missions, and to the tasteless but nutritive fare that passed as field rations even among the Jedi, he was not finicky. He loaded a plate with the densest fare possible and set to it dutifully, tucked into a convenient corner. When he had done, he remained in his preferred position of aloof observer, though he knew by now that raising his hood would only attract attention rather than deflect it, as it properly should.

He crossed his arms and watched the revelry unfold. Music and dancing carried on unabated at the far end; many people sat on the floor, against walls, munching and chatting contentedly with comrades; Cerasi had shepherded the new arrivals into a loose knot, a ready audience spread at her feet, while she spun some fairytale or fanciful story for their amusement, her face animated by its telling. Nield and an older man – one he had been informed was Nield's father, his name now forgotten – were surreptitiously threading a path among the crowd, here and there stopping to proffer something in small bowls to the older or more important members of the gathering. The padawan smiled a little at this unspoken acknowledgment of natural rank and precedence, despite the Young's disavowal of formal leadership.

They came in time to his remote corner.

"White lightning? Made it ourselves, been saving it for an occasion."

Not wishing to offend, Obi-Wan accepted the dubiously palatable beverage with a nod of thanks and waited for them to move along.

"Well?" the elder at Nield's elbow demanded. "Tell me what you think, boy."

Blast. He would have done better to demur with some vague reference to the Code; now he must needs make polite show. The pungent scent of distilled liquor rose to assault his nostrils; he tipped the thin-rimmed bowl against his lips and swallowed, eyes watering. "Incomparable," he decided, managing a half-smile. _Revolting._ Worse than the filth Qui-Gon had plied him with on –

"Put some hair on your chest!" the elder rasped, chuckling heartily. He accented this observation with a friendly open-handed slap to his guest's front.

"Come on, Da." Nield offered Obi-Wan an embarrassed grimace and chivvied his companion forward again.

Odd that, considering the Young didn't believe in nuclear family ties. Obi-Wan discreetly set the bowl aside and resumed his quiet watchman's post as Nield was roped into an impromptu singing performance. The latter person stood at one end of the room, _taro_ in his hands, and grated out the words of some kind of anthem or hymn, one swiftly joined by most those present. They were not entirely in key, nor in unison, but the general gist was clear enough – the chorus urged the world in general to effect a radical abolition of Suffering itself through the means of sentimental visualization, particularly that of a society without spirituality, government, or other ethically repressive institutions. The young Jedi frowned a bit over this. In his experience, the systematic deconstruction of social and cultural safeguards and traditions inevitably led to a situation calling for aggressive negotiations. This was a new doctrine to him, the creed of a singularly naïve visionary, one who advocated _imagination_ where the Order preached _discipline _ and _sacrifice._ A puissant fantasy indeed, he decided with a wry lift of the brows.

"What are you scowling at?" Cerasi teasingly inquired, materializing at his side. "Don't Jedi sing?"

No, as a matter of fact Jedi did _not_ habitually intone canticles full of saccharine pseudo-eschatological drivel. But tempting as it might be to point this out, he did not have the heart to insult Cerasi's cherished and well-intentioned beliefs. Instead he managed to elude the pointed question with one of his own. "Are the younglings well? They seemed very pleased with your recitation."

She looked at him keenly. "They were….Oh, you're worried because they were scared of you." Her piercing gaze flitted away again. "Can't say I blame them, either."

"I did what I had to do," he replied tightly.

Her smile returned, lighting upon him like a fluttermoth upon a reluctantly unfurling blossom. "I bet they would be reassured if you _sang_ for them. Show them you're not a scary death-dealing warrior _all_ the time."

He wriggled uncomfortably at the notion; he was not a trained monkey lizard, some street performer to be paraded for the enjoyment of -

"Come on. It'll be good for you, too." She was bold enough to seize his hand in hers, dragging him forward into the middle of the expectant crowd, and thence to the waiting circle of children, whose numbers had been augmented by the few members of the Young who truly merited the appellation. Two dozen round faces stared up at him in manifest awe.

Cerasi beamed down on them. "This is my friend Obi-Wan. You met him earlier, when he helped rescue you. He's very sweet on the inside, even though he looks like a _furwaggi_ on the outside." An amused sideways glance at the victim of this introduction. "Would you like him to sing for you?"

A timid chorus of approval, some hesitant clapping and one or two _yeas._ The youngest of them, perhaps three standard years old, flung herself forward and clasped the young Jedi about the thigh. He extricated herself from her clinging fists and lifted her up, eyes shooting daggers at Cerasi, who merely settled cross-legged among the small audience, smiling beatifically.

"Zilla wants to hear you," she insisted. The girl nodded in agreement and yanked painfully upon his long learner's braid.

"For the love of – _fine." _He shifted impatiently. "What shall I sing to you, Zilla? Not that _imagine_ thing."

The girl sucked complacently on the end of his plait, making him cringe. "Song," she ordered, with the imperious confidence of a planetary ruler.

The command was so curt and absurdly obvious that for a fleeting moment he was reminded of Tahl Uvain, a painful twisting beneath his ribs unclenching as he breathed out the memory into the Force. A Jedi was resourceful, and flexible.. and sometimes he might even stand to benefit from a mild distraction. "Song it shall be," he consented, running mentally through his repertoire and swiftly divining that the rollicking Phindian folk song _Lay of the Waylaid Lad _ would not meet with an appreciative reception in present company, even though his impishly suggestive rendition had once rendered the imperturbable Qui-Gon Jinn speechless with shock.

Instead he chanted one of the Vetruvian modal sun hymns, and then a more melodic piece from Chandrila, and then a lullaby or two he had learned at the furry knee of Troon Palo, patient chaperone to the irrepressible Dragon Clan, and finally the tenor aria from a classic Alderaanian opera – something he had mastered at the behest of Tahl herself, for no other reason that it pleased her and that he "somehow always managed to transform the conniving villain's part into a soulful lament, how piquant."

And when he had done, most the wide hall was rapt, and Zilla had obligingly drifted to sleep, and Cerasi was sitting entranced with tears in her eyes, and an expression on her face that stirred within him some deep instinct to flee. He made some excuse and handed the limp child to her – and beat a strategic retreat, but not so quickly that he missed the resentful lines digging deep into Nield's weathered features.

Music, like philosophy and swordsmanship, was a double-edged and perilous thing.

* * *

Moreover, so was disobeying one's Jedi master.

"Explain," Dooku commanded, this laconic order preempting any need for trifling niceties such as greeting or introductory remarks. His holographic image flickered in a static wind, as though alight with its own vexation.

There was no question of prevarication. Obi-Wan shifted the holo-projector upon his palm, hunched over the ghostly image of his mentor in a back alley not far from a disused sewage grille leading to the Young's subterranean realm. "There were innocents at stake. Younglings," he tersely replied, jaw stiffening into an obstreperous line.

The Sentinel raised a withering brow. "The mission takes precedence over any other consideration," he growled, "Including your sentimental whim. If your focus cannot withstand the lure of every passing vagabond, then take the shuttle and return to Coruscant. I would be better off without your brand of assistance. Indeed, I might commend you to the care of the healers; I am told early intervention can do much to palliate the symptoms of congenital idiocy."

Never had he been so harshly censured. Obi-Wan could only blink in astonishment, and utter the only response even remotely acceptable under such conditions. "Yes, Master."

"I was obliged to pass your stunt off as my own by effecting various other inane and puerile acts of sabotage about the city. I have thus wasted an entire night leading the trail away from you, and compromising my own position to remedy your egregious error in judgment. This will _not_ happen again."

"Yes, Master."

Dooku was not impressed. "Your concentration and efforts will henceforth be limited to the mandates of our mission. Syfo-Dyas' headquarters in located in the southeastern bloc, inside the Daan judicial complex. It is well-fortified. Your task is to find a means of infiltration – and I will not tolerate any further deviations from that purpose, nor will I brook further headstrong magniloquence on the subject. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Master."

The Force was incandescent with displeasure. "You will learn to _own_ those words in future," the senior Jedi growled. "I shall not fail you as I did another."

"Yes, Master."

"I should think so." And with this last dismissive remark, Dooku snapped away into a fizzle of blue exasperation.

Obi-Wan deactivated the comm device and stuffed it into his belt pouch with a rebellious vehemence that surprised even him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 9**

Obi-Wan woke the next morning, curled disconsolately in his chosen nook of underground pipeline, with a profound throbbing in his shoulder and head.

"Son of a slatternly Hutt." There was _immune,_ and then there was _more or less immune._ Judging by the pain and the fever, his vaunted resistance to Kar'Thon's toxic darts fell more in the latter category. "Blast it." He resolutely squeezed his eyes shut against the feeble trickle of light invading upon his gloomy retreat and drew his cloak close about his shoulders, dimly realizing that someone – the ephemeral trace of Cerasi lingering in the ambient Force – had added a thick military-issue thermal blanket to his coverings. He was gratefully annoyed by the solicitous intrusion, and alarmed that he had not _noticed_ the event at the time.

He determinedly sank back into the limbo state on sleep's border region, where the Force pooled for him in golden wells, places he might bask and slough off the coils of pain and inflammation. The poison would pass through him like light through transparent glass, if he focused his energy upon healing. The scratch his Darshiki friend had inflicted was a mere distraction, nothing worrisome in the grand scheme, though not a pleasant reality to contend with first thing in the morning.

He had spent some inestimable span of time in this pleasant half-trance when a very outward and emphatic set of claws lanced into his knee. With a short yelp not exactly Jedi-standard, he bolted upright and glowered at his small hirsute assailant. One of Cerasi's notorious stray felixes luxuriantly stretched, rising from its comfortable nest among the tangle of blanket and cloak near his feet.

"Scram," he grunted, and the creature obligingly betook itself to its own business, though with a slinking superiority suggestive of contempt rather than obedience.

Thus relieved of unwanted company, he rolled over again and sought the elusive comfort of the Force – but the universal Light seemed to have reached the end of its patience with his sloth, for it nudged him back to alertness again, rippling faintly.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the curious face of Zilla.

"Feex?" she asked him, pointing down the tunnel with one pudgy hand.

"It's gone," he informed her, propping himself on one elbow and squinting in the murky twilight.

Apparently interpreting this as an invitation, the unsupervised child – who was in charge of these young ones, anyway? Had they no teachers or chaperones of any sort? – inserted herself into his solitude with an aplomb he now associated with the Young's unapologetically hyper-communal subculture. She grabbed a corner of his blanket for herself and plopped her insubstantial weight against his side.

"Force," he grumbled, siphoning off the last of his headache into its gently stirring currents. He rubbed one hand over his face and idly lamented the fact that he had no depilatory with him.

"Owie?" the grubby child asked, poking him in the belly with one soft finger.

"I'm fine," he responded automatically, eyes tracing over the stained curve overhead. Fragments of intuition settled like leaves freshly fallen upon a clear reflective pool, featherlight gifts of insight precipitating into consciousness with his unfurling wakefulness. He frowned, waiting for the disparate pieces to form a unity…

"Song," the little waif demanded.

"Not before noon," he mumbled, brooding in earnest now. Could it be…? Or was he growing paranoid under the baleful influence of this wretched planet?

"Zilla," he addressed his companion. "Those bad men. The ones with guns. Do you remember them? Who were they?"

A pair of startling eyes glossed over with sudden tears. The child's mouth puckered into a frightened rumple. "Bad!" she wailed. "Dead!" And then rational thought – such as she possessed – fled her, leaving only a series of incoherent sobs in its wake. She promptly buried her face in his chest and descended into outright hysterics on the spot.

He exhaled, tentatively stroking the quivering back. Some interrogation expert he turned out to be. But the girl's words sent a chill of apprehension, a cold electric certainty through his bones. Kar'Thon's army of "fallen ones" was a nightmare from the nine hells, spat up into living reality through Force knew what Dark-side depravity.

He shivered violently then, but dismissed it as the remnants of fever.

* * *

"Reconnaissance, huh?" Nield poured a steaming superfluity of black liquid into his cracked alumisteel cup. "Caff?"

Obi-Wan hesitated and then accepted some of the bitter argees. It was _similar_ to tea. From a certain point of view. And it was all he was going to get down here.

"I can't stop you, but I think you're wasting your time."

The young Jedi swallowed a generous mouthful. With milk and sucher it would be tolerable, he supposed. More like cha or Twi'Lek _roobuss._ "I need to get another look at that soldiery. Something's not right."

Nield snorted amiably. "The Melida, the Daan. Of course something's not right. These are people that have been killing each other on the slightest pretext for generations. Believe me."

"There were _both _ uniforms in that grouping. It strikes me as suspect."

But this did not faze the Young's unofficial second-in-command. "So they stole kit from the other side. Or from prisoners of war. Been done before, to confuse the enemy. You're overthinking this. And we have other problems to deal with. Are you still committed – about the bioweapon or whatever it is?"

Well. That _was_ the question, wasn't it?

A deep breath, and another swallow of hot caff, to buy time. "I can't directly involve myself," he cautiously replied.

Nield's mouth twisted bitterly.

"But I can perhaps expedite the process," Obi-Wan added. He wasn't about to _abandon _ these people to their fate. "Behind the scenes. And," - a small, fierce grin – "reconnaissance can accomplish more than one end."

This earned him a sly answering smile. "Okay, I get it. You've got your own rules and your own way of breaking 'em."

The padawan winced inwardly. Oh dear.

"Just let me know what you find out there," Nield said, by way of dismissal. "We need to make a plan soon. That gunk in the stasis tubes makes me nervous."

" I share your unease." He handed back his half-finished caff and swept up the passageway to the nearest external outlet, fingers brushing against his saber hilts as he steeled himself to weather the tempestuous storm of hate on Melida-Daan's broken surface.

* * *

The city was coated in floating ash.

Rebreather clamped between his teeth, eyes streaming from the acidic fallout of whatever primitive explosive had been employed in the night's raids, Obi-Wan threaded his way thorugh the sickly rainfall toward the sector Dooku had indicated, the site of Syfo-Dyas' selected stronghold. Heavy smoke clouds clotted the air, blotting out the sky and looming ominously over the ragged entrails of the urban landscape.

He flitted from blasted hulk to achingly hollow arcade, in and out of alleys, across sagging rooftops and beneath the dead sculpture of rubble that littered every square and intersection. If there were patrols out this early, he encountered none. Likely enough both Melida and Daan had enough sense to stay out of the bomb's aftermath, a thought that brought the young Jedi scout up short beneath the shelter of a jutting balcony. Perhaps there was radiation to be wary of? But the Force communicated to him only a general sense of furled malice, no acute personal danger, so he pressed onward.

And stumbled at last upon the site of recent devastation: what must have been a highrise building, now reduced to a crumbling hecatomb of rock and durasteel, a funerary mound of obscene proportions. Smoke rose in billowing columns from the wreckage; fire still smoldered here and there.

And all among the heaped shards of masonry, in and out, digging beneath the heaped girders and shattered panes of glass, a strange army of scavengers crawled.

He hunkered down behind a collapsed support pillar, shielding himself within the Force's omnipresent veils, breath spilling softly between slightly parted lips as he stared out in disbelief at the scene unfolding before his eyes.

The men and women who haltingly scrabbled and pulled at the debris were clad in both Melida and Daan uniforms, many of them tattered and burned. Their postures were uniformly skewed, slumping and off-kilter as though they were afflicted with a nervous malaise. Their skin was pallid, blotchy and pustulent in places, bespeaking terrible plague or slow-spreading cancer. And the stench rising off them was strong enough to compete with the choking edge of smoke and burnt plastoids. The hidden observer buried his face in his tunic sleeve momentarily, fighting back a dry heave.

This stricken crew went about its task with expressionless and unflagging determination, searching doggedly among the ruins for some unknown treasure. Perhaps survivors, the young Jedi mused, though it was unlikely any would be found in the midst of such destruction. Those not crushed or blasted to oblivion by the explosion would surely have perished of its toxic aftermath, or simple suffocation. He waited, in a paralyzed fascination, as a group of seekers emerged form the pile triumphant, each bearing a limp human form draped over its shoulders. These – _bodies,_ he knew, because the Force was empty, devoid of any life energy –

His heart skipped.

No.

The corpses were piled onto a hover palette, willy-nilly, by the staring and shuffling rescue party, who also…

He turned his head sideways, spat out the rebreather and coughed up a small pool of bile. _Focus, focus._

It was impossible, and yet it was so. There was _no_ trace of life here at all, the Force an eviscerated and staring blank, a void mocking him with a leering skull's grimace. As though in protest, to make up the deficiency, his own heart pounded defiantly, sending hot adrenaline-laden blood coursing through his veins. Zilla's pathetic cries echoed in his ears. _Bad! Dead!_

He ducked backward into his place of concealment, gathering his unruly thoughts into a semblance of order, ruthlessly shoving all emotion into the margins of consciousness. Later perhaps there would be time to process the implications – now he must simply act. A small squad of the scavenging party had been deployed to escort the hovercart of fresh bodies away, in the direction of their distant stronghold.

"Going my way," he muttered, darkly, and set off in pursuit, intoning the cherished mantra of serenity to himself as he followed the dark convoy on its mysterious errand into the heart of darkness.

* * *

_There are many false seeker after immortality, Seeker. The number of those who revolt against death is legion. These yearn for endless extension of that which is innately limited, for a meaningless rut of existence beyond its natural boundaries. Tell me, then, what is it you wish to discover?_

_Not endless life, Master. That would be folly._

_Then what? For death is part of life as much as birth. Without beginning and ending there is no substance, no self – only the unvarying cycle of time, such as governs inert matter, wind and water. _

_It is not more of the same, or deferment of death that I seek… it is consummation. _

_You grow wiser. Our Way is not one which offers more life, but only that which already is and always has been, origin and destination. We do not conquer death, but embrace its true nature, laying aside selfish need and fear._

_Teach me to do this. I am willing._

_Be warned: those who tread this way with greed in their hearts find only the Dark consolation of life without end, everlasting torment. They are the true undead, worshippers of power and rebels against the yoke of mortality, known to you as Sith, and to us by other names as well._

_I heed your words, my Master._


	10. Chapter 10

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 10**

The shuffling procession made slow progress through the crumbled byways of the district, defunct boulevards and roughly cleared alleys between ruined structures providing a rough mountain pass through treacherous territory. At one intersection, the bumbling hovercart of bodies was joined by another, replete with its own escort of lurching attendants.

Obi-Wan followed close behind, veiled in shadow both literal and figurative, his own efforts directed less at concealment – for his quarry showed no signs of great perceptive power – than at quelling his own rising gorge. The sight of so many ghastly limbs piled helter-skelter upon the shipping palettes sickened him. He had of course seen the aftermath of battle fields before, been _made_ to look upon the mangled handiwork of war at a young age – but even then, when the bodies were removed, they had been carted away with due ceremony, or at least a respectful covering. Here, dumped upon a trolley like meats fresh from an abbatoir, the dead were more defiled and desecrated than those he had seen purposefully mutilated by their foes.

And their staring eye sockets, gaping mouths, and rigor-stricken limbs, clutched in a gross paroxysm of outrage, did nothing to ameliorate the effect.

This perverse cavalcade came at last to its destination – a pair of massive ray-shielded gates set in a blank durasteel walll, a shining new construct amid the decrepit bones and ruins of the old city. Guard bastions were set at regular intervals along the top, and automated sentry cannon punctuated its surface. It was fortified like a castle under siege, which only made sense here on the world of pitched warfare and fathomless hatred, and yet the expensive and avante garde nature of the defenses seemed jarringly out of place. Melida and Daan had been scrapping together makeshift weaponry and bombs for decades… while the newcomer had obviously brought his own playthings and set them on display for all to see, an ostentation of power and wealth.

The young Jedi breathed out slowly, taking in every detail of the formidable security measures. Entry would not be easy – and espionage near impossible unless he could contrive a means to slip through the heavily barricaded main gates and thus gain access to the fortress' inner workings.

Ranks of armed guards moved forward to relieve the scavenging parties of their burdens. A few droids – the spindle-legged Trade Federation models, he noted with curiosity – were left in charge of the goods while the portals were levered open a few meters to admit the hover-palettes. The first load of decaying cargo had been safely propelled inside before the obvious idea presented itself to his imagination.

And it was a blessing that he had no time to think twice, for surely had he been granted any chance to reconsider, he would never have acted as he did now: a flick of the Force to send some stray rubble flying across the open courtyard, a more emphatic surge of power to send a droid sentry flying smack into the wall, and the whole lot were convinced they had been attacked. The droids moved in a synchronized unit toward the supposed origin of the threat, pumping the general vicinity full of blaster bolts. One or two of the automatic cannon set high in the wall picked up on the cue and loaded several high-power artillery rounds in to the unfortunate pile of masonry, too, producing a cataclysmic dust-cloud and deafening noise that nicely covered Obi-Wan's lightning-quick egress from his shelter. In a heartbeat, he had ducked and rolled to the abandoned palette's edge, nudged the nearest dangling pair of blood-crusted legs upward, and inserted himself beneath the topmost corpse in the pile, sucking in a deep _tai sumi_ breath, one he intended to hold long enough to break his personal best of 11.5 standard minutes.

Having obliterated their imagined assailants, the droids returned to duty and trundled the second load directly through the gates and into the main body of the citadel.

* * *

After a solid ten minutes, he was certain he would pass out – Jedi training notwithstanding. Lungs screaming for air, and head reeling despite the extreme slowing of his metabolism made possible by a finely controlled application of the Force, he abandoned his ambition to top his own record and sucked in a shuddering breath between gritted teeth. The stench of rancid flesh clotted in his throat and turned his stomach, but he focused his awareness _outward, _ on the passing surroundings. His semi-hibernation had allowed him to pass through a scanner array without being noticed. They had then descended to a sub-level inside a huge lift, and were now traveling along a long corridor, the droids' feet echoing sharply on unadorned walls and floors. The inert mass atop him threatened to slide off the palette when they came to an abrupt halt before a final pair of massive hangar doors, perhaps the entrance to a factory floor, judging by the sense of _space_ just beyond and the vague hum of generators audible even through the thick panels. He seized a handful of stiffening muscle and bone and wrenched the corpse back upward

A code was entered, and the doors parted to admit them into a cavernous interior chamber. He could hear sound bounce off high girders, lose itself among the far corners.

"Put the new shipment here," a deeper droid voice ordered, and the original escort clanked away double-file, leaving the two heaps of fallen soldiers in a lonely side bay, a temperature controlled storage area. A door was slammed shut, and darkness descended.

At which point the padawan's control broke. With a hissing imprecation he wriggled free of his erstwhile prison, shuddering as he squirmed out of the suffocating mass of arms and legs and broken chests. His fingers brushed against staring eyes, teeth exposed by the leer of death, patches of cloth still damp with sticky blood and entrails..

He stumbled away, hit the freezing wall of this refrigeration unit, rubbed both hands over his tunics and trousers, feeling the clinging detritus staining their fibers, the impalpable traces of death woven into their fibers. His teeth chattered with the cold, and incipient sickness rising in his throat. He was suddenly grateful for the pitch black of his surroundings; he did not wish to see the faces of those who had been his close companions the last fifteen minutes.

Squatting down on his haunches, he recited the Lotus of Imperturbable Bliss mantra seven times, according to tradition, each repetition grounding one of his main energetic chakras back in the Force's radiant center. Revulsion seeped from him, into the sluggish currents of Light, while his instinctive nausea slowly subsided.

And now to work.

The lock on the refrigeration unit's door was no match for the Force; he swung the reinforced panel open on silent hinges, reaching out into the plenum like some furtive forest creature scenting the wind for sign of danger. The universal energy was badly disturbed here, contorted into dizzying knots and pained reticulations, an agony of disorder and perversion. But there were no particular _centers_ within the marbled skein of this chaos, no shining stars in the nebula of dark design.

Droids, then. Or the _Fallen Ones._ But not Syfo –Dyas… unless the renegade Jedi were well hidden by his own masterful power. A step forward, then another, submerging his own presence into the nameless flood of power as far as he dared, drawing a mantle of light about him as shield and veil.

The rafters would provide the best vantage point; a swift Force-propelled leap brought him onto the nearest cross-beam, a precarious perch from which to observe the machinations below. He crept along his narrow path, to a joining section at the roof's apex, and crouched against the upright beam, staring down at the spectacle beneath him, his mind only reluctantly piecing together what eyes and gut intuition conveyed with a weird lucidity. What he beheld was…. the resurrection of the dead.

A travesty of it.

An obscene blasphemy committed against the Force itself. Here, at one end, bodies were unloaded from carts, splayed out upon cold slab tables, stripped of garments and equipment, prodded and examined by a bevy of droids. Some were passed along, others discarded into a furnace to one side. The reek of cremation hung in the air despite the powerful venting system. Further along, the selected corpses were subjected to an even odder treatment, submerged in a vat of liquid that looked as though it might be a bacta variant…

His head spun, and he clutched at the durasteel beam for support. Heights had never affected him before; glancing down at the slopping liquid in its transparent walled tank, he knew that it was nothing wholesome. Outwardly benign, it exuded a pale mist in the Force, a sickly nimbus of Dark power, one he had felt but recently on Dathomir.

A sharp inhalation. Talzin's pact with her visitor: had she imparted some sithly black arts to Syfo Dyas in exchange for the location of certain artifacts? It must be so.

He forced himself to watch the next step in the vile proceedings. Mechanical slings and braces were employed to lever the dripping bodies from the witch's brew, whereupon they were blasted dry and laid out again, only to be descended upon by an advanced model medical droid fitted with a bevy of injector arms. Nearby stood an open crate of the _bantha snot_ he and Neild had previously discovered and muddled over – and as he watched in gaping horror, the droid set to work on its latest victim, ruthlessly injecting copious volumes of the milky substance – the _nano droids- _ into what would be key circulatory targets in a living body: arteries, abdomen, spinal cord.

The process efficiently completed, the abused corpse was set aside upon another bare surface. And here the transformation took place – lumpen flesh twitched, then writhed, and soon bone and tendon convulsed, the pallid frame wracked by tremors as though in pain or deepest throes of nightmare… all in silence, in hollow void. The bodies moved, spasmed, stiltedly sat or attempted to stand and fell flat upon their faces, unaided and unnoticed. And yet they were _nothing, _ as vapid and insubstantial in the Force as any automaton, as any dead thing.

Eventually another droid came to shepherd the newly re-animated away, a clumsy knot of men and women trudging obediently in its wake as it led them through the far doors and on to whatever unthinkable fate awaited them – presumably the blank subservience of their comrades, the mindless horde of soldiery he had seen scavenging aoming the bomb site, and earlier when the Young had raided the Trade Federation delivery.

Obi-Wan sank down against the cold cross-brace and remembered to close his mouth, dragging one hand over it, slowly, as though to wipe away some bitter-sweet aftertaste of bile upon his lips. The very Force seemed to sigh dolefully in his ear, an ethereal lamentation.

Syfo-Dyas was beyond depraved. He was utterly irredeemable.

* * *

_There is more than one kind of living death, Seeker. The first is a thing of fantasy, of horror tales spun upon hearthstones for children's delight._

_You mean zombies. There is no such thing._

_Not in truth. But there is another sort of living death, one all too common among sentients. To live without mindfulness, without purpose, without awareness of our luminous origin and destination – this is to be dead while alive, the spirit extinguished even while the gross matter of its vessel still burns with vitality. Such are all pleasure-seekers, wealth-hoarders, power-mongers, desirers of pomp and glory. The living dead in fact and deed._

_And the third, Master?_

_Ah. The third. That is what we have attained, Seeker. A death that is life, the passing of light into light, of lantern into supernal fire. _

_Teach me, my Master. This is what I seek to know._

_The true death is like unto a second birth, its seeking a labor of spirit. You will bring it forth in pain and groaning, and rejoice only when it is done. Prepare yourself._


	11. Chapter 11

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 11**

Eventually, the Force descended about him, an ethereal brush against his stunned mind, an invisible hand nudging him along much like an overweary child is chivvied into its bed at day's end – and he, hollowed by the vision of excoriating darkness, stumbled on his way at its behest, senses and inner focus delicately rent apart, into separate spheres, the outward registering merely upon his nerves and brain while his soul retreated into the fastness of Light, and trembled there.

If he saw the battalions of reanimated corpses arrayed in castoff uniforms and gear, lined into squadrons and legions and hustled into rude barracks at the compound's far reaches, if he noted the warehouses full of shipping palettes, the stacked piles of ordnance and weaponry, the transports ready to be loaded, if he looked upon the drilling regiments led by mercenaries and bounty hunters, hard faced men whose grim demeanor was surpassed only by the expressionless despair of the hosts they commanded, these things fell upon his mind as abstract facts, moves in some surreal dejarik game or riddling koan that he must unravel at future time. He felt his spirit carried along by its willing vessel, his feet light and sure as they conveyed him along the rafters of the factory, into a duct system in the roof, along parapet and through dark passage, an unseen witness to nameless horrors, until he reached the refuse piles at the far southern extremity of the enclosure. Automatically, instinct and training accomplishing what his numb will could not, he slipped into the laden bed of a garbage trawler, ducked beneath the filth piled therein, and allowed the machine to trundle him past the last sentries and into freedom.

He really only came back to himself when the machine dumped him amid a reeking mountain of trash at the city's edge. He thrashed through the avalanching debris, harnessing the power of the Force to spare himself suffocation or injury, and clambered over the side of the massive landfill trench into a dreary gloaming.

Taut with horror, like a strained waterskin ready to burst its seams, he wobbled to the nearest bit of cover – a disused charging port for droid sleds and scoops – and closed his eyes, practically begging the Force for some measure of release.

It was slow to come, the hate-saturated currents reluctant to absorb the runover, brushing ineffectively over his mind, a sopping cloth set to absorb a sticky ooze of revulsion. "Sith," he groaned, _hating_ this Force-damned planet and every one of its creeping, twisted deni-

_No._ He should have known better than to attempt meditation in a place as polluted as this. He must needs wait, to find purer waters in which to bathe. Back, back to the shadow-puppet realm of dissociated memory he thrust every detail of the last hours, pushing them out from his center to exile at the fringes of consciousness, where they winked faintly at him like the reflections of some other person's experience. Safely neutralized, they posed no immediate threat to his balance. He would grapple with them later, when he had a moment to think, to breathe. When he had arrived back home.

He did not pause to consider the bizarre implications of that last thought, either. This place was too perilous to hazard reflection.

* * *

Cerasi was waiting for his return, a strained expression on her face.

"You've been gone for _hours. All day,"_ she said, relief roughening her voice. A half-step forward, the hand reaching for his arm arrested in mid-motion.

"I need… clean clothing. A bath," he grated out.

"What did you see? Where have you been all this time?"

He shook his head. Not yet. And how in the name of all the stars was he to tell these people what lurked just over the future's ramparts, what apocalyptic maw was poised to swallow them whole? He did not wish to play prophet of doom.

Cerasi moved closer; the Force seemed to relinquish its claim over him into her keeping. He still moved in a daze, guided now by flesh and blood beside him, by the warmth of a hand upon his back, by the murmur of words and phrases he could not be bothered to parse into meaning.

"Here. These are spares.. they should fit.. don't take too long, the heat generator's on the fritz, you'll end up scalded or frozen if you're not careful… something to eat… a minute…"

His inner core curled further toward the Force's vanishing point, where fact and awful possibility were compressed into the unity of hidden purpose, the peace of the absolute. Other times and other places, past fear and pain, these too spiraled inward its bright oblivion and disappeared, leaving him empty, scoured and shaking. Somewhere, in the material realm, he managed to scrape away the stain and sweat of his undertaking, exchanging his ruined Jedi tunics for simple but clean garments, a pair of faded fatigues and a thin woven shirt scrounged up from the Young's stores.

Cleansed body and soul, he presented himself into company again but found only Cerasi and a lukewarm plate of food he gently refused.

"Well, then, at least get some rest. Everyone but the night sentries has turned in… look dead on your feet… warmer in the lower tunnels, there's a cold front moving in… got the children settled better today, I think they will be all right… "

Her voice sustained him as far as the broken pipe he had appropriated as temporary quarters. A felix or two curled about Cerais's ankles in greeting upon their arrival in this particular dank corner of the universe. The motion sensitive glow-rod sputtered a pale radiance over them, flickering in and out of functionality.

"Piece of cheap chisszk," Cerasi muttered.

"You stole it," Obi-Wan reminded her, automatically. "It was a deal at the price."

He clambered into the open curve of the pipe, as grateful as any bedraggled womprat returning to its nest. He was too empty – or else too weary – to object when Cerasi's warmth settled beside him, a gloriously _pure_ throbbing in the Force, a simple pulse of animal life, nerve and bone and blood and breath. Alive. Untainted. An island of sanity in a mad oceanic abyss. He leaned into this Force-sent gift, center abruptly plummeting from rigid abstraction back into the flesh, into the primordial comfort of space and touch, of the gentle swell of Force between self and other, a thing as natural to him as breath, woven into vital instinct before speech or reason, when large hands comforted small hurts, when a dozen bright spirits lay nestled close upon sleep mats in the shelter of the Temple crèche.

Cerasi seemed to slip into the spell of that memory too, for she slid down the concave wall until they lay cradled together and her touch flowed into a symbion circle with his need, fingers carding through damp hair, rubbing at the line between his brows as though to smooth it away, tracing very gently down his cheek and cupping the bristled edge of his jaw. He sank into it, into sensation and warmth and the unsullied Living Force, defiant banner raised against horrible blasphemies… half asleep with her heartbeat pounding – _quickly, life life life life-_ beneath his ear, beneath the sloping valley of her bosom…

…fingers ghosting over eyelids, down nose, over lips, along the cleft in his chin…

"Siri," he mumbled, drifting into a melting dream _life life life life life…_

If he felt her wistful salutation brush over his forehead before she slipped away, he gave no visible sign.

* * *

The Force rose like a tide, Light scintillating on its infinite planes, glittering beneath the supernal dome of interior heaven. It rose, boundless, until it covered all things and he was adrift upon it, shipwrecked mariner clinging to some stalwart fragment of memory, afloat on its mercy, buoyant and empty. And when the tide rushed back again into the hidden places of being, roiling now to its own thunderous drums, the cresting waves of premonition and destiny, it left him beached upon a high shore: a place littered with his mind's own jetsam, fragments and shells of past experience.

He woke like a man half-drowned, and slid from sleep into meditation without effort, without conscious intent. There, upon the smooth sands of intutition, he stood and gazed round at the wreckage of worlds, the scattered debris of conspiracy and thwarted evil. Here, like a sharp-edged shard of glass, Xanatos' leering face. There, a bit of the Phindian Syndicat's mind wipe machine. Nearby, a rotting timber from Apsolon's brainwashing scheme. By the water's hissing edge, Merggum's conditioning camp, a heap of twisted kelp. Far flung, like the carcass of some hideous deep sea beat, the rotten entrails of Zan Arbor's experiments. And gnats buzzing, swarming over all of it in hungry clouds, Syfo-Dyas' millionfold treason.

He looked upon the broken shore and he understood. All that had transpired… so much of what he had seen… this _army,_ this _abomination…_ had been long in the making, a thing gestated in darkness, crafted and re-forged over years, in many places, an evolving scheme slowly turning in its rank womb , ready to be spawned at its master's bidding.

To what _purpose_?

He paced solemnly to the edge of the sea, the dancing fringe of Light-crowned glory, and knelt, imploring the waters to give up that last secret, his hands reaching for its foaming white hem as a supplicant clings to a monarch's ermine mantle.

But the tide withdrew, gently, leaving him with two handfuls of sand, and the scent of salt-tears in the air about him, the lamentation of millions blended into the sea's music.

Light glinted upon the waves, now distant, retreating unto a lost horizon, leaving him in the desert plains of the here and the now.

He woke with a start, neither asleep nor in the Force but stiff and sore and sheltered in a cold drainpipe beneath the surface of an inhospitable world.

* * *

Yan Dooku was not an easy man to catch off balance, much less horrify. "By the Force," he breathed, angular face drawn into tight lines of shock. "His daring has exceeded the bounds of sanity."

Obi-Wan waited, breathing in a measured cadence, watching the holograph flicker uneasily upon the projector plate.

"Shall we delay our objective until the rest of the Council is informed, Master?"

But the Sentinel scowled at this. "No. On the contrary, this makes our purpose more urgent. He must be destroyed."

The padawan's throat tightened. "And then?"

A flash of actininc authority lit the older man's eyes. "And then we are finished here."

"But the Young. And the Melida, and the Daan. If there are hordes of ..fallen ones… left behind, they will be massacred. There were _thousands, _Master, and the means to produce more."

Dooku would have none of it. "This world is already under quarantine. And so it will remain until the threat has burnt itself out of existence."

"It would be a simple matter to destroy the factory, and the barracks as well," Obi-Wan argued, desperation tingeing his voice. "I could do it easily."

One silver brow rose, sardonic. "You severely underestimate the problem, Padawan. What you witnessed is but the beginning. Transports have been sent to every major urban center on this continent, and subsidiary operations established. This much I have discovered; your intelligence only casts his plans into clear focus. It would take a concerted effort of months to purge this planet of such an infestation – better to cut out its heart and let it wither where it stands. As soon as we return to Coruscant, I will see that the Senate reinforces the standing blockade."

A neat solution, were it not for –"The innocents dwelling here!"

"There are no innocents here," Dooku growled. "You have but to _feel_ the hate in this world's very air to know this. Do not be misled by sentiment – or youthful idealism." A heavy sigh, one softening into a textured sympathy. "Sacrifices must sometimes be made. Someday you will understand."

But that someday had yet to come. Obi-Wan's spine went rigid. "We cannot leave them to their fate! We are Jedi!"

The Sentinel closed his eyes briefly, then fixed his appalled student with a piercing gaze. "And how many innocent lives do you plan to sacrifice in the endeavor to wipe out a planet-wide pestilence? You wish to secure peace at a great cost. How many lives will suffice for your planned holocaust?"

The young Jedi bowed his head. "None," he rasped.

But it was not quite true. Because to embrace this cold tabulation of relative evils would negate the sum total of his short existence, transform it to a meaningless parody of vows meant to be scribed upon the inmost heart.

There was, in the final reckoning, no innocent life he would sacrifice to such a hopeless cause... except _one._


	12. Chapter 12

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 12**

Nield dejectedly contemplated the wavering schematics as they rotated idly in mid-air above Obi-Wan's compact projector. Set to maximum magnification, the small device cast an impressive image, a colossal rendering of the scrapped fighter's inner secrets.

"Vape. There's just no way to make it work without new parts." A hand rose and carded through thinning hair, leaving a greasy trail behind.

Obi-Wan completed a thoughtful circuit about the makeshift hangar, pondering the holographic diagram much as he might study a star-chart before departing on a mission. "You could dismantle the hyperdrive and cannibalize parts. It's not as though the ship will be making any more supralight journeys."

The older man released another wistful sigh. "Not without the right tools. I wouldn't dare breach the dampers without a proper micro-fusion cutter. We only have junk."

"A 'saber blade can do it." A 'saber blade and a very, very, _unnaturally_ steady hand.

Nield's watery eyes squinted at him dubiously. "You offering to get directly involved, now?"

A shrug. "This is merely an engineering project. An avocation. I'm not _involved."_

"_Right."_ Nield's lined face broke into a grin, an echo of the passionate youth he must once have been. "My mistake." He switched off the projection and handed the disc back to its rightful owner. He braced the young Jedi's elbow with one hand, a sudden pressure there, a natural link between generations. "You know… this is going to sound strange to you… it's just, I lost my son. Years ago now. He would have been about twenty now." A heaviness settled in the Force between them, a sour knot of remorse. "Cerasi was his mother. We were very young. Well," he added, with a bitter breath of laughter, "We were The Young."

Obi-Wan felt at a loss without his wide sleeves. Where did one fold one's hands into at such solemn moments? "I am very sorry for your loss," he responded, automatically, abstractedly noting the dull echoes of Nield's pain across the acoustic dome of his own heart.

_There is no emotion. There is peace. There is no death. There is the Force._

But Nield was not a trained Jedi. He abruptly, inexplicably broke into tears, shoulders hunching into a miserable ball and hands hiding his shame behind trembling barricades.

Obi-Wan looked away, the response as hard-wired into him as the ritual bow of respect to an elder, as the habit of addressing all authorities as _master,_ the raising of mental shields about his own instinctive reactions as a courtesy to others.

But Nield was a man accustomed to harsh realities, both inner and outer, and moreover he was a _man._ So he turned to the obvious source of consolation a half-second before his companion suggested it himself. "Let's get to work on that fighter," he hoarsely wheezed, shoving the moment of weakness aside.

* * *

Cerasi sought them out, bearing a laden tray in her hands.

"You two should eat."

The noontime fare was nothing but pressure-canned fava beans. The Young took what they could get, and liked it. Trained to eat whatever was set before him –within the dictates of reason – Obi-Wan simply set about the odious task of consuming his meal with a brusque practicality, and then wiped his hands on a rag.

"Tonight is firstday again," Cerasi announced, gathering the soiled plastoid bowls and utensils. "I'm going up."

"No," her two companions intoned, in unison.

She raised her eyebrows at Obi-Wan, tossing the lustrous waterfall of red hair over one shoulder. Silver strands glinted here and there among the bright skein."Oh so you're telling me what do do now, too? You two are in cahoots."

Nield scowled. "Please, Cerasi," he pleaded, but his words fell on deaf ears.

"We've been over this before. I'm going, Nield. You have no hold on me. We don't believe in any of that chisszk, remember?"

Obi-Wan winced, understanding that he was witness to a _private_ argument. "Excuse me," he muttered, rising to afford them some privacy.

"No you don't," Cerasi snapped. "You took his side, now back up your words. Why shouldn't I go?"

Exhale. Slowly. "The danger is greater than before. There are… developments you don't know about. I need to finish my mission here. Then, perhaps.. " Except, of course, he could not outright lie. Nor could he force the vile words up and out of his gullet: _you are to be left to your fate when I am gone. Sometimes sacrifices must be made._

Cerasi's fierce emerald eyes brooked no opposition. "I'm going."

"Then I'm going with you." Imperious, and final. A tone of voice worthy of any Jedi Master.

She wilted beneath the onslaught, and took out her wrath on Nield instead of the speaker. "Fine! I'll remember your virility when I light candles for the dead."

When she had stormed away, Nield rested a stained hand upon the young Jedi's shoulder. "Thanks. I'll feel better with you up there to watch her back."

Obi-Wan nodded, puzzling over the scene he had just witnessed. " I do not understand her resentment toward you, given… your relationship."

The older man chuckled wryly. "We don't; believe in restrictive relationships. Besides, Cerasi only hates me every twenty-eight days. You'll catch the hang of it, once you've been around women long enough."

Apparently, Obi-Wan reflected, there were some hidden benefits to Temple culture that he had not yet truly appreciated, having no standard of comparison. And perhaps there was something to be said for the straightforward lifestyle of bachelor pairs that was most prevalent among his colleagues, young and old. Certainly living in close proximity to Dooku… or Qui-Gon… had never involved cyclical bouts of esoteric incivility. Although, in defense of the other side, _Bant_ never indulged in such unpredictable – or was it alarmingly predictable?- behavior. As for Siri…

Well. Did he even dare _speculate?_

"Come on," Nield gruffly interrupted his thoughts, no doubt misinterpreting the slightly mystified expression on his young companion's face. "Let's get to work, then, if you're spending your evening at the ceremonies."

* * *

Offering to cut into the hyperdrive damper arrays with his 'saber had been a brash, headstrong, and ill-advised notion - but he did it anyway. If there was one certainty in Obi-Wan's mind, one foundation more secure than any other it was this: he would keep his promise, once given. And his pledge to help Nield constituted a minor promise.

He kept it, regretting his stupidity with every spark and drip of slagged tritanium that smoldered through his clothing and boots. The _shoto_ blade was better suited to the task, having a shorter length altogether, and a more refined adjustment focus for power and intensity. He had built it later in his career, a more elegant and fine-tuned weapon than his first 'saber. And inside its heart thrummed the crystal of a woman who had in life been nothing but precise insight and trenchant, purifying fire of spirit. If anything could cut through theoretically impenetrable alloy, it would have been Tahl Uvain's merciless wit.

And so, he did in her stead, the Force guiding his hand through the most delicate of operations: the fulfillment of honor's demands without causing devastating destruction.

And that was the difficulty, was it not? That and perhaps its concomitant problem: balance. For at this point in his evolving personal identity, honor demanded the fulfillment of many oaths, many promises. An oath to serve and obey his master; to submit and be guided by the Council; to uphold the Senate's decree and the Republic's more nebulous ideals; beyond all these, the inmost and sacrosanct vow of all Jedi - to serve the Force itself without reservation. The promises teetered, a skyscraping tower of obligation, pinnacle and foundation separated by ten thousand years of hard-won wisdom and a bitter history. Every member of the Order must find the elusive center of gravity, the plumbline from summit to base, the unerring fulcrum point of conscience by which he might _align_ all these potentially conflicting dictates.

All except one, whose mantra had ever been _be mindful of the Living Force._ And, by implication, the rest will be added unto you.

"Hey," Nield interrupted his brooding assessment of his present ethical crisis. "That's done it! I'm officially impressed."

And he had, indeed, done it. The dampers fell away, neatly severed without a single nick or scorch left upon the hyperdrive's labyrinthine inner realm. Obi-Wan smiled then, feeling that he had somehow got the tail end of the riddle's answer; later, when he could meditate, perhaps he would feel his way forward to its front and see what he had caught. For now, however…

"Now we can make some trouble." He was no engineering genius himself, though certainly competent, and he had difficulty with the more discursive and schemtic mathematical aspects of astronavigational theory. But the one thing he _could _unerringly accomplish in the domain of technics was the assembly and repair of a hyperdrive core, that knot of paradoxes that powered interstellar travel and made a mockery of dimensions and sizes. Perhaps because this represented a jutting peninsula of mechanics into the deep and uncharted waters of intuition, a loving brush of matter upon the boundaries of metaphysics. He would never know why, only know that he almost _understood_ the mess of circuits and amplifier fields splayed before him.

That was enough for Nield. Danger successfully thwarted, he leapt into the fray readily, sleeves rolled up above his elbows, weathered face shining with fervor. "Yes," he muttered.

They set to work dismantling the exquisite outer matrix first. The task invited inrospection; neither of them felt compelled to make small talk. The intricate web of connections was painstakingly unraveled by skilled hands, hidden unities revealed one by one beneath the apparent chaos. A wave of guilt washed through Obi-Wan's mind as intuition made the deep connection between outer and inner: he had dropped into the Young's existence much as this derelict fighter had, an anomaly like a meteorite hurtling out of heaven into the complex tapestry of their history and circumstance. He knew nothing of them but the most cursory and trivial details – he had not bothered to ask.

"Nield."

A grunt beside him indicated that he had the other man's attention.

"How did the war between the Melida and the Daan start? Who are they? Why the hatred?"

He could feel Nield's surprise and disappointment slide over the Force'surface, a cynical shudder of resignation in their wake. The man had just realized that his whole life's purpose and cause was a footnote soon to be forgotten in his companion's existence, a mere colorful proscenium for the more important drama playing itself out on the galactic scale. The young Jedi caught his lower lip between his teeth.

_Blast._ These were _people, _ not statistics in a mission report, facts in a briefing file…

"You'd have to ask Cerasi," his companion answered, tersely. "She's a better storyteller. And I… I'm sick to death of it."

"I'm sorry." He was.

Nield snorted again. "Never mind," he mumbled. "I've just outgrown it all, I suppose. But Cerasi – she hasn't aged. Not on the inside. She's still burning with ideals, doesn't understand why the rest of us have guttered out. She'd go up in flames at a moment's notice, if she had a spark to her kindling."

Obi-Wan held his peace, understanding more than was explicitly stated.

"Be careful tonight," Nield added, with a curt nod.

They labored on, in silence, only exchanging words when expedience demanded it.

* * *

Cerasi was waiting for him near the dank sewer tunnel entrance, a bundle of real wax candles in her hands. "I've been saving these. They smell like _fellmar,_ which is now extinct. Probably, at least."

The ephemera of childhood association wafted upon the Force's currents; he did not enquire further. "We use candles for meditation sometimes. An ancient custom."

Cerasi nodded, watching him intently as he pulled his cloak's hood forward and tucked the 'saber hilts out of sight at his belt. "Meditation."

"I could teach you, a little," he impulsively offered.

She tied back her hair in a sinuous and untidy knot and slipped into a shapelss thermal jacket. "That would be nice." One hand rubbed at a temple, the back of her neck. "Whatever it is." She jerked her head toward the exit. "Let's go. The armistice won't last long tonight. Both sides are getting uneasy again."

He nodded, and followed her up the sloping passage, extending his senses into the plenum, seeking special indicators of danger ahead. Melida-Daan's choking hatred cascaded down the tunnel to meet them, a chill draught like the stroking caress of bony fingers over rictus-taut flesh.

"Are you okay?"

He nodded, and held out a hand. "After you."


	13. Chapter 13

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 13**

_The first step is that of dissolution._

_Destruction of the body, Master?_

_From your point of view, perhaps. But if you search your feelings, you will find that there is no true destruction of the corporeal. _

_Yes, this I know; matter returns to the universal cycle, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, fire to fire, immaterial spirit into the Force itself. But this is a destruction of the individual, for are we not held disparate and distinct by the flesh, our bodies a lens through which the unitary Force is refracted?_

_So you have been told. But matter may be scattered back into the elemental cycle, or it may be subsumed into that which is higher._

_I do not understand._

_O course not, for this is what you have come to be taught. Those whose spirit is flawlessly centered in the Light may yoke their very bodies to this same discipline. And in them we see a different kind of death._

_Discorporation. As that of the ancient sages. _

_Indeed. And there are other ways, too. For a thing is where it is centered, and when the body is centered in the Light, just as the spirit, then it goes where the spirit wills, whether or not it is destroyed in your frail realm of existence. And it may return to the Source, purified and resplendent, a thing immortal._

_I … I am humbled. I do not know what to say, my Master._

_Say nothing. This is not a doctrine of words, but of deed and inmost submission. This is the summit of contemplation, the consummation of all knowledge. Silence is its mantle and crown._

_Then I shall remain silent._

_As you say: be silent and attend to what is here revealed._

* * *

The memorial courtyard was silent, but for the susurration of grieving fire, the crumble and snick of crude matter reduced to fluttering ash, the skittering of debris in the ghostly margins of the square. Shrouded figures knelt before the blackened braziers and miniature hecatombs; others waited in the shadows, restless guardians over a living graveyard. Loss and deep-harbored pain rooted the mourners to their places, fed the quite fires of their rite.

Cerasi knelt before her own shrine, a pathetic altar upon an upturned block of stone. She stirred the ashes of firstdays past, settling her candles in amid their morbid grey sea. "Join me," she invited, extending a lighted taper to her companion.

Obi-Wan sank down beside her, mind still wrapped in heavy veils, armored against the creeping Dark and his crafty foe – who even now might be seeking, probing the currents of the plenum for the source of recent disturbance. Somewhere in the invisible eddies, he thought he could faintly trace Dooku's signature also, a peculiarly fluid wisp of smoke eluding his most intense concentration. And so they chased one another, three wraiths flitting among the sepulture Force, shadowed and obscured, a deadly game of cloak and dagger.

"Obi-Wan." Cerasi's voice brought him back to his immediate surroundings. All but one candle had been lit, wavering tongues shimmering in a soundless chorus of regret. "I left this one for you. Your father, you said."

Father, brother, friend, master. And he not the only one: there was also a… mother. And… a sister not yet dead but forbidden utterly, debarred from his affection. And the future leered at him out of the blinking flames, a thousand-eyed angel of death staring hungrily from the future's depths, promising a vast immolation, a pyre heaped to the Temple's topmost spire, ten thousand strong.

"What's wrong with you?" A hand settled on his knee. "Every time you come up here it gets worse."

He lit the candle, mutely, an automaton trudging through rote movement, the decades, the centuries of hate settling like suffocating silt upon him, so thick and cloying he could barely breathe.

"You can go back," she told him. "I don't really need a bodyguard." Her gaze lifted to the surrounding walls, where watchmen and snipers waited, anticipating the violation of this standing truce, two score of men poised at the brink of war, arrested in mid-stride for this sacred stretch of hours.

"I'm fine," he lied. He was anchorless here. "Talk to me… tell me the story of the Melida and the Daan. Nield said you could relate it better than he. What- what _made_ all this?" he gestured helpless round at the courtyard's ruinous borders, the drab uniforms, the bent shoulders and heads, the impalpable despair precipitated out of thin air, spewed like fresh volcanic ash upon the whole.

Cerasi folded her hands in her lap and sighed, pondering the candle-flames' mocking dance. "Oh that's a story I can tell. If you really want to hear it."

_There is no ignorance. There is knowledge. _ "I do. Tell me."

She stretched her hand sideways and grasped his fingers between her own, tentatively at first, and then firmly, linking past and present, outsider and nativeborn, ambition and memory. He tensed minutely, then relaxed.

"Once there was a planet. Some called it Melida, some called it Daan. Two peoples dwelt there, two passionate and proud people. They had families. They owned land and made things, and owned these. They bought and sold and traded and built and traveled and made governments. They had priests and rites, custom and law. They created these things side by side, rivaling each other in skill and ingenuity. They grew prosperous and powerful. They flourished. They joined the galactic Republic. Their affairs became the affairs of others. They were allowed one representative in the Senate. The two peoples fought for this honor, this privilege. This power. One was elected from the Daan; he was killed by the Melida. Another was sent by the Melida; he was killed by the Daan. Jedi were sent to resolve the dispute. They came and preached about fine things: justice, peace, trust, and their Force. They left. Nothing changed. Melida killed Daan, Daan killed Melida. They were censured and denied their place in the Senate. Daan killed Melida, Melida killed Daan. They failed to prosper. They grew impoverished, and with deprivation came more violence. They bought and sold from pirates and crime lords. They were used, they were further humiliated. They killed to restore their honor. More peacemakers were sent with fine words. They too were killed. The Republic shut the planet up inside itself, where it festered. It sank into fever and delirium, and it wasted to nothing, killing itself over and over without reason or end. Until the last days, when Melida and Daan had purged the world utterly, and there were none left."

As she spoke, her face hardened into a translucent zeal, the glow of youthful fervor sparking behind weary eyes. "But that was not the end. For there were a few who rebelled against this state of affairs. They went into exile beneath the planet's surface, and they were Young. And they stayed Young, even when the world ended. And when the time was right, they came forth again and began a new spring. And they changed what had been, and abolished families and property and government and religion – all the things for which their forebears had died. And they made a new world. And it was peaceful and beautiful and wise."

She laughed bitterly. "A better place for our children."

Her hand squeezed his, grinding his knuckled together painfully. "Do you like my story?" she demanded blinking hard. "It has a happy ending."

He drew in a deep centering breath, but it was fraught with the toxic miasma of hate. "I hope it will," he replied, simply. She had told him nothing useful about the Melida or the Daan… but perhaps that was not the point at all. Gravity seemed to invert itself, the world's axis shift beneath him as Vision again encroached upon sensation. He exhaled harshly, defending against insight, against premonition. Not _now,_ not _here._ "I do not think.. your story – it's not unique to your world." He stumbled over the words, incoherent, pressure building behind his temples as he forcibly resisted the intrusion of his unpredictable gift.

"Are you all right?"

"No." Blast it. _Blast_ _it._ Before his inner eye the candle flames transformed into burned and pillaged cities, a sacked Temple, the Dantooine Enclave in ruins, Coruscant overthrown, occupied by a faceless terror. Ancient faces rose in legions, figures born in fire – warriors of the ancient Sith wars, adepts of Darkness, the enemy in corporal form, a tide of rising blackness poised to engulf the galaxy, to snuff out every star and constellation in a smothering hurricane of raw hate…drums pounded dully, voices chanted words he did not know.

_Korah. Matah. Yoodah. Korah. Rah-Tah-Mah._

Cerasi was shaking him. "Hey. Hey, you need to lie down, or something. Can you even hear me?"

Two hands raked wildly through his hair, pulling at the roots, simple pain dispelling the wicked canticle's clamorings. He should know better, have better control, _be_ better than this.

And then, like a kick in the face, hard and unexpected in the wake of his _distraction:_ danger. Real, and in the present moment.

He sprang to his feet, instantly galvanized. "The Fallen Ones. They're headed this way."

Scouts on the upper ramparts signaled the same, whistles and sharp gestures indicating the approach of hostile forces. More soldiers appeared silhouetted against the evening sky.

"No," Cerasi breathed. "Not firstday. They can't." She gazed frantically at the milling observants, now restlessly murmuring, a the first stirring of fear whipping them into an eddy of raw emotion, leaves helplessly tossed in a cold wind.

The drumming in his blood grew louder; the tension electrically strung between Melida and Daan here in the square escalating into vibrant hatred. Both sides would assume the raiders had been sent by their rivals, a sacrilege too outrageous to go unavenged. "Go!" he shouted, infusing the command with every ounce of persuasive power he could muster. "Run! Go now!"

A few obeyed, but most stayed, weapons appearing from hidden holsters, beneath folds of cloaks and worn coat plackets. The rooftops bristled with armed soldiery, guerillas ready to soak the ash-strewn pavement with new blood.

Tramping feet – there, and there. Six different alleys, like the pits beneath a gladiatorial arena. The Force lurched, shuddered with warning, but there was no _life_ within it, only a sucking void, a staggering horde of empty vessels drawing nigh.

"Cerasi." His hand closed round her arm. "Into the tunnels. Quickly. Go."

She was not weak-minded enough to succumb. "No!" she shrieked, wrenching herself loose. "No! Not firstday! They can't! This is all we have, not _this!"_

She sprang atop a fallen pedestal in the courtyard's center, arms flung wide. "Stop!" she hollered. "Stop! Please! Not _here!_ Not _now!_ In the name of-"

The words were knocked clean out of her lungs as his Force-push sent her careening from her perch, the blaster bolt grazing within centimeters of her body, striking the stone slabs beyond with a splintering pitch. She hit the ground hard, wheezed, clutched at a bloody scrape upon her forehead, and then gasped in abject horror.

The Fallen Ones poured into the walled enclosure in bumbling legions, clumsy legs knocking over braziers, scattering ashes. Blaster fire riddled their bodies, fire licked at their clothing but none fell. Holes gaped in their flesh, burns ripped tendon and muscle from bone- but none fell. They raised weapons and mowed down those who did not flee before them, faces haggard and eyes bereft of light, putrid flesh hanging in tatters where they sustained injury – but none fell.

And behind the initial wave, another pressed forward, and another, hundreds upon hundreds until the memorial fires were ground underfoot and the fragrant offerings crushed amid the stench of blood and putrescent meat.

"Cerasi!" He hauled her upright, shoved her in the direction of the sewer grating through which they had come. Both 'sabers flew into his grip, sapphire tongues leaping forth, pulsing hot, singing low.

He carved a passage through the abominable host, words of destruction thundering in his veins, demanding entrance to his inner sanctum, battering upon the doors of resolve. _Korah. Matah. Yoodah. Korah. _ Severed heads piled about him, bodies hewn to pieces, a butchery without rival, a bloodbath without blood, a massacre without death. The press of lifeless bodies opened, yielded like grain before his twin scythes, and they fled, scrabbling over twisted limbs and smoldering flesh, and tumbled headlong into the shelter of the Young's secret realm.

He powered down the 'sabers and sagged against one dank wall, shutting out the siege upon his heart. The foreign, compelling chant died into a ragged pulse and the swell of breath beneath his ribs, the echo of screams and despairing howls above.

"_Oh gods!_ Gods, gods," Cerasi moaned, eyes squeezed shut, hands clutched against her belly. Blood dripped sullenly along one side of her face. "Dead… walking dead… how? Oh gods."

The echo of vomit spattering against stone set his reflex off, too.

When they could stand upright again, they did - and hurried onward, harbingers of an unspeakable doom.


	14. Chapter 14

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 14**

"You could have been killed, Cerasi!" Shards of panic fell, bright and lancing, through the Force. Neild's face was deeply scored, the lines of premature age gouged deeper by those edged pieces of his composure. He shook his wife by the shoulders, gently.

Not wife, Obi-Wan reminded himself. The Young recognized no such binding relationships.

"So?" Her voice was the glazed consistency of glass, melted in fire and solidified by shock, a thing seemingly strong, transparent, but brittle, liable to fracture under stress. Cerasi shook beneath the tender abuse, afraid and angry. "So? That could happen any day, Nield! You know it!"

"What will happen to us without you? Do you think of that? The Young – we depend on you, on your vision, on your passion! Do you think of anyone but _yourself,_ Cerasi?"

The unobserved observer crept softly for the door. This was not his argument, nothing it was his place to witness.

"You mean do I think of your needs, Nield? This is about you, not me! If I die, then you _go on!_ You carry them on, like I would ! I need you to promise! Where's your _fire, _Nield? What's happened to you? Where's your _heart?"_

The answer hung unspoken in the Force. She held his heart hostage, though neither would admit it. Obi-Wan fled for the adjacent corridor, craving the solace of meditation, or perhaps more sleep. This was a _private_ matter, none of his affair.

Their raised voices followed him down the passage warped by the curved walls of the defunct sewer, accusations hurled at one another with excoriating fury, with bottomless passion.

He found his own corner of this claustrophobic universe and sank into a full lotus. How perilously close was love to hate, hate to love. There were good reasons the Path wended the narrow way between such damning extremes. Exhale. Release. The bickering voices faded into the distance.

How perilously close is destruction to hatred, the blade's searing edge to anger. Be wary, Jedi. Be cautious. Inhale. Open. The argument continued, distantly, and beyond it other people circled the sun of their purpose, a complicated dance, the Young in orbit about their nebulous ideals. A child cried, somewhere. A felix yawned and stretched. A Jedi apprentice melted further into the Force.

How perilously close hope was to despair, defiance to surrender, compassion to purpose, obedience to treason. Exhale. Center. The Way admitted of no error; one slip and he would plummet into the abyss, into depths where Light could not reach. The siren call of those profound voices, the lisping tempter speaking in exotic syllables – _korah, mata, yoodah, kora - _ this would not lure him from the sure path. Nor would any deceitful will-o-wisp lead him astray when so much hung in the balance, the precarious scales of destiny tipping beneath him with every movement.

Inhale. Stillness. Serenity. Peace.

Dooku had not yet answered his comm. A stray thought- banish it.

Peace.

_Sometimes sacrifices must be made._

There is only the present moment. The Living Force, font of possibility, root of paradoxes. Serenity.

Deeper.

Deeper.

One.

* * *

It was Cerasi who disturbed his tranquility.

"What are you doing? Is that …meditation?"

Obi-Wan did not ask what had brought her to his metaphorical doorstep, for this would be to invite the corollary inquiry. What had brought him to hers? A magnetic link, some quirk of destiny, bound them together for the duration of this nightmare. That was all. It was the will of the Force.

He opened his eyes, clamping his jaw shut against the inevitable hiccup. He had surfaced too abruptly. "Yes."

She sighed, a throaty exhalation redolent with futility and frusration, and slid down against the drainpipe to sit beside him. "I might as well talk to a stone."

His brows rose delicately. "I've not been called a senseless dolt in quite some time."

Cerasi laughed. "Not you – Nield. The stupid bastard." The terror inspired by her encounter with the Fallen Ones had been siphoned off into resentment. The young Jedi noted the transformation of energies, let it slide past his awareness, part of the ever-running stream in which he still trailed a corner of his mind, like a child dangling his toes in a refreshing brook.

"You care deeply for him," he asserted bluntly. "And the reverse is true as well. I do not see why you persist in exhibiting hostility toward one another."

Cerasi tilted her head to one side. "You can… read minds, can't you? Or something like that."

He denied this with a mute shake of his head, but she pressed onward, regardless.

"It must be a strange world you come from, where people can see through each other like that… in some ways, it would make communication much, much more difficult. I mean how can you really say anything to anyone when you're standing there… I don't know, naked?"

He could recall one or two Council sessions that would provide poignant examples, but it seemed more important to dispel her unease. "We can also hide our own thoughts and feelings – and so can most sentient beings, without consciously trying. I can't read your mind, not truly."

Nor would he try. There were mysteries lurking just behind the crystalline windows of Cerasi's eyes – profundities that confused him. Better to leave them in obscurity.

"That's good," she shrugged, not believing him. "But you're right. I do love Nield. That's why I'm so frazzed with him. I need him to explain this new situation to the others. Why can't he get out of his own head and see that? It doesn't matter what _almost _happened to me. It's about what _could_ happen to all of us."

At that, he broke eye contact. _Sometimes sacrifices must be made._

But Cerasi's fluid spirit tumbled along the next bend in the stream of consciousness, not noticing his subtle evasion. "Nield and I.. well, it's complicated. Have you ever been in love? I guess I should say, yet?"

Obi-Wan frowned over this bald reminder of his inexperience. "Jedi do not love, in the way you mean."

Her mouth curved into a full smile. "That's not what I asked you."

"I don't see what –"

"It was just a question."

They locked gazes, rebellion fomenting on two fronts.

"Never mind, I –"

"Yes."

"What?"

"_Yes."_

Cerasi swallowed hard, taken aback by the raw, unadorned revelation. "I.. you just said Jedi don't –"

"They don't. Good ones don't."

She slid closer, but he drew his knees up and encircled them, effectively fortified against further siege. Rebuffed, Cerasi turned away. "Her name is Siri, isn't it?" When he made no answer, to affirm or deny, she clambered awkwardly to her feet. "I'm sorry. It's none of my business. And I shouldn't have bothered you. I need to find Neild and patch things up. Gods. We have to tell the others – the Young don't have secrets, either."

Obi-Wan nodded curtly, and let her go, fiercely glad for the restoration of his solitude.

* * *

He left the thankless task to the Young's own proper leaders. Ordinarily, a Jedi ambassador would never shirk unpleasant duty, would take it upon himself to deliver devastating news and to soothe the hurt that followed, to deal with the psychic and political aftermath.

But he was not here to play ambassador.

He was here to kill a man.

"We must act soon, Master," he insisted, not veiling his aggravation.

Dooku's holographic figure delicately raised one brow. "Impatience is seldom your downfall at dejarik. Apply the same lesson here."

Piqued, the man's apprentice tilted his chin up and deepened his frown. "This is not a game, Master. He is planning to decimate the native population – I can sense it. The firstday massacre was a mere opening salvo."

But the Sentinel took this in stride. "Of course it was. He hopes to reduce both Melida and Daan – and the dreary rabble with whom you are closeted – to fodder for his war machine. I do not need _you_ to dictate to me the moves of a well-known enemy."

The reminder rankled. "Yes, Master, but are we not permitted to make a move of our own? I've waited long enough." Perhaps too long. The Dark was starting to curdle in his veins, his blood run hot with the perpetual fever of this world's ageless vendetta.

A cold chuckle. "The rook wishes to be a bishop, or is it a _Knight?_ We are making a move; be content with your part. It is important enough, I assure you. I have spoken with the leaders of both the Melida and the Daan; they are each convinced the other precipitated the attack, and are ready to take up arms against the perceived blashemy. A little more persuasion, and they can be guided into making simultaneous assaults upon our friend's defenses. And when that occurs, I shall spearhead the joint effort while you _strike from behind."_

Obi-Wan was in a no less belligerent mood than the leaders of the opposed armies. "Surely he will see through such a shallow lure? He _won't _ expose himself on a field of battle, Master."

His open exception to the proposed course of action earned him a withering glare. "I am well aware of that, _Padawan._ He will decline the obvious invitation; you will be waiting for him at home."

The gambit was still far too simplistic to be effective; moreover, it was not up to Dooku's personal par for treacherous schemes. Unless that fact in itself were a purposeful, minutely calibrated feint, another means of catching the traitor off balance? It was possible. The young Jedi clenched his jaw shut, lest a torrent of truly disrespectful objections poured forth despite his best control. His was to do, not to know… and yet, the plan still seemed fatally sophomoric. "I still have a bad feeling about this, Master."

"You would be a fool did you not. But I trust you will not fail to act?"

That would be to fail in his very oath, to fall short of his destiny by an immeasurable gap. "No, Master. I have waited too long."

"Good. Do _nothing_ and wait for my signal. May the Force be with you."

And Dooku's imperious image snapped into oblivion, leaving his apprentice crouched alone in a dark corner amid the city's wreckage.

* * *

This time meditation availed him nothing. It was like changing clothing in the middle of a monsoonal rain – no sooner had he released emotion and thought into the Force's soothing radiance than he was soaked to the bone again by chill hatred, the floodwaters now building to excruciating pressure behind flimsy dams as Melida and Daan prepared to wage all out war against an inconquerable adversary, witless victims of a cosmic hoax, pawns now of Syfo-Dyas and his foes alike.

He swiftly abandoned his attempt to find his disintegrating center, opting instead for meditation in motion, the channeling of his restless spirit into the strict discipline of the seventh and eighth forms. He drove himself through the katas without cease, one flowing into the next, his shadow a distorted partner to the laborious dance, its writhing limbs a mute parody of the grace he strived to embody, a second self traveling alongside him always but changing the cadence of its motion just enough to be utterly grotesque.

Trance-bound, his mind wandered free of the present moment, cast by inner light and fire onto the future's shifting cavern walls. In one transient puppet-show his second self seemed to fight Syfo-Dyas, cutting the renegade Sentinel in half with vicious precision; in another, it fought the hordes of the Fallen, mowing them down in merciless waves; in yet another it was the Melida, the Daan, and ultimately the Young whom he slew, a rabid monster caught in the throes of its own wrath. And in the last, he fought himself, flesh against shadow, wraith against specter, two contorted dark figures that at last- in a stark climax- impaled one another and were unbodied, their flickering silhouettes fading into the gloaming underworld where he stood, transfixed, his dance at an utter end.

The Force brought knowledge, then, and warning: but little peace.


	15. Chapter 15

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 15**

Nield's wiry arms were wrapped tightly across his chest, fingers drumming pensively against his sides. "Gods." A harsh exhalation almost a shrill whistle between wind-parched lips. "_Gods."_

"It is bad." Obi-Wan was adept at honeying the truth; he simply chose not to in this instance. The antique holo-map of Melida-Daan – a two dimensional projection floating a scant meter off the tabletop – shimmered as though trembling beneath their disgust. Red markers indicated sightings of Fallen legions, both here in the capitol and in some of the outlying cities and provinces that still had functional comm equipment. The Young's scout network was flexible and diligent; every day new reports flooded in, sketching a horrifying portrait.

The armies of the dead multiplied, their ranks swelling with the numbers of those they slew. The plague threatened to overrun the entire planet.

"They're like kriffing _bounders,"_ Niled muttered. "Reproduce in exponential sequence."

"Best not to focus on numbers," his Jedi companion advised. "The key is to target the production centers. Those need to be located – sending a surveillance team to watch where the next shipments are unloaded would be the first step. There must be compounds similar to the one I saw in every major population center. Destroy those, and you stop the manufacture of new .. soldiers. Then you've only to address the issue of those left behind."

"You make it sound easy How are we supposed to take out a series of huge industrial installments? These people – whoever they are – have all the money and equipment."

And that was a disturbing thought – for funds and technology came from offworld, from _Republic_ sanctioned trade franchises. Obi-Wan banished the distracting consideration. "Heavy ordnance. A few well-placed explosive clusters. Or an aerial bombardment."

Nield's arms slumped at his sides. "We don't _have bombs."_

The padawan raked both hands through his now ragged hair. Besides shearing off a length to burn on firstday, he had trimmed away a few clots and tangles of gore with his Vespari knife, leaving the net balance in a wolfish disarray that made him glad for the dearth of reflective surfaces or mirrors in the Young's dreary habitat. "I can show you how to make them."

"With what?" the older man demanded.

That was the problem, wasn't it? "Well…" Dare he? "The shuttle I arrived on carries extra fuel cells and some proton torpedos that would fit your fighter's weapons system. Most Republic vessels are on the same standard."

Nield ran his tongue over his teeth, head cocked to one side. "Thought you can't get involved directly."

"I'm only going to show you what to do, not do it myself."

An acerbic bark of laughter. "Yeah? And what about looting your ship, huh?"

Obi-Wan exhaled slowly. "I'll be looking the other way. Very intently."

A slow nod of acquiescence, and a sly grin of understanding. Nield wordlessly accepted the offer of non-involvement. "Where is your ship docked? We'll take a grav skiff out there this afternoon."

* * *

"Just where do you think you're going?"

Cerasi stood arms akimbo, emerald eyes flitting from their thermal jackets to the protective dust goggles perched atop their heads. "Nobody goes out, remember?"

The Young had retreated deep into the fastness of their refuge after the firstday travesty. Cabin fever had begun to set in among the more restless spirits, Obi-Wan included.

He shrugged. "Out."

She thrust a finger under Nield's nose. "Oh, so _I_ can't risk my neck but you can?"

"This is for the common good, Cerasi," he retorted, in a mild tone. "Not to … observe some defunct rite."

Fury flashed actinic in the Force. Nield obviously knew her trigger points well.

"We're gathering supplies for the invasion." Obi-Wan stepped between them, spine prickling with awareness that this was his position on more than one plane. "It has to be done- I'll insure that we come back in one piece."

"Supplies." Cerasi's mouth hardened.

"We're fighting back," Nield grinned. "The Young aren't taking this lying down."

But it was a misstep. "Oh, _now _ you've got the balls to fight! Twenty years later!_"_ Cerasi hissed. "What exactly are you planning to do? Smuggle in super weapons and save the day? Clean up this whole frazzing mess of a planet in one fell swoop? Because the kriffing Republic cavalry finally rode in?" She seized Obi-Wan's jacket lapels, a hapless assault. He gently contained her rage, pinning both wrists against his chest.

"Cerasi –"

"Shut up, Nield!" She put up a futile struggle. "I've waited and waited for you to _do_ something! When they killed Litha and Te, did you fight? No! When they killed my father, did you fight? No! When we starved that one winter, did you fight? No! No, you don't do anything! You just _survive! _And now you think you're a frazzing hero, Nield! You're not. And _you're not,_ either," she growled at Obi-Wan. "You're a murdering barve, a blood assassin. Both of you! Get out!"

"Cerasi, Wake up! We're _survivors. I'm _ the one that made that happen. But it seems like surviving isn't a frazzing option anymore. Now back off. We're going to the surface and we're bringing back explosives and you can either be my partner in this or you can stay here and tend the children and spout waterworks like a simpering priss – but you aren't _stopping_ us. And I don't give a _fark _what you think about either of us."

Nield had remarkable skill at pyrotechnics. Cerasi wrenched one arm free of the young Jedi's precautionary grip and delivered a powerful backhand to his face. "Pass that on to Nield for me," she snarled, before jerking her other wrist loose and storming back up the corridor into the sullen gloom beyond.

"Well _done,"_ Obi-Wan snipped at his companion, rubbing his tender cheekbone.

"She needed to hear it," Nield grunted, hunching his shoulders guiltily.

They headed for the outlet, side by side. "You are no diplomat, my friend."

"Nobody is a diplomat where women are concerned."

* * *

The Republic light shuttle was cathedral to Neild's pilgrimage; he made reverent assessment of the cokpit, fingers tracing a mute litany of praise and glory over the forward console and the commsatt array.

"You sure we can't just… borrow.. this for a few hours?" he breathed, eyes glossed with wonder and delight. "Fark, I haven't seen a piece of machinery like this in so long… "

"No," Obi-Wan replied, denying the implied request. Perhaps when he had been a stupid and reckless thirteen he might have considered commandeering the ship without his master's approval – but there were _some_ forms of idiocy he might have outgrown. And he, like Nield, was a born survivor. He stooped over the controls and pressed his palm to the security coder, unlocking the maintenance hatches and computer. "Let's get to work. I have a bad feeling about staying out too long."

Nield trailed after him into the aft compartment, and thence to the storage hold. "Cerasi got under your skin, eh?"

"No. I can't explain."

The time was nigh… he could feel it in the tautening Forc,e in the invisible thunderheads gathering now on the horizon. Melida and Daan were mobilizing, organizing a concerted siege upon Syfo-Dyas' stronghold. He would be called upon then, the blade of the Force unsheathed. His gut twisted in acute dread.

Nield doggedly piled fuel cells and torpedo shells upon the grav skiff's rickety bed, lashing the cargo down with sturdy synthfiber cords. "Feel like a real pirate now," he commented.

Obi-Wan dredged up a smile, his innate humor sinking into the morass of dark anticipation. Nield seemed suddenly old – worn and lonely, too burdened and ill-equipped to bear the burden of leadership, to play general in a battle against impossible odds; the stolen ordnance a pathetic and desperate gesture, no more.

These people deserved help. Jedi help.

But…_sometimes sacrifices must be made._

"Let's go," he urged his companion. A cold dust-laden wind rose, and they fixed the protective goggles back in place as they whipped away, bumbling over the rocky plateau on the crest of the rising storm.

* * *

"I assume you were able to contain your kleptomania within acceptable bounds," Dooku drawled, the caustic edge to his voice rasping over his apprentice's nerves like a deadly electro-probe.

Obi-Wan did not ask how the Sentinel knew. Nor did he deny the implicit accusation. "We took only the surplus. Nothing to hamper functionality."

"Hm. Your idea of _doing nothing_ and mine are very different, my young friend."

"Yes, Master." The physical distance separating them was a palpable relief.

Dooku's eyes narrowed. "Another deviation from my direct order and you will find yourself _craving_ leisure to do nothing."

The threat was delivered with off-handed indifference, a mere elegant aside. Obi-Wan's teeth gritted together hard enough to hurt.

"A traditionalist such as yourself need not be reminded that the older Precepts were not so restrictive concerning disciplinary methods. Pray I do not wax nostalgic."

If the Sentinel elaborated further, his remarks were drowned in the roaring behind Obi-Wan's ears.

"Well, Padawan?"

"Yes, Master."

"Very good. Now that we have reached an understanding, perhaps you are prepared to attend to the mission?" The silver haired Jedi paused significantly. "The Melida and Daan have orchestrated a concerted attack tonight. They will lay siege to the main fortifications after sunset. I want you inside before that time."

"Last time I infiltrated by concealing myself in a grav wagon full of… supplies," Obi-Wan objected. "Other methods may prove riskier."

But Dooku had foreseen the difficulty. "Your Darshiki ally has been well-instructed in the plan. Meet him by the lower southern gate at dusk. He will conduct you inside the compound and provide you with his personal pass key to the inner doors."

It was too convenient. "Kar'Thon can be treacherous, Master. I prefer to deal with him myself."

"He will not betray _me," _Dooku growled, thin lips curling slightly upward at one corner. "He may be a mannerless boor, but he is not _that_ foolish. Meet him this evening. After that, you must act as the Force directs you."

So this was it. "Yes, Master. I will."

"Good. I look forward to the completion of this odious task." And with a tight nod of dismissal, he ended the transmission.

Obi-Wan's hands slid over the smooth weapons' hilts hanging at either hip. The crystals chimed faintly for him, melodious and sad, a melancholy lament for what was to come. And he closed his eyes, sinking into his role, into the merciless fine-edged skill to which he had been so painstakingly honed, a peerless blade ready to strike at the heart of evil.

Tonight Syfo-Dyas would fall.

* * *

_When you speak of yoking the body itself to the Light, what do you mean, Master? You must intend something beyond even the rigors of asceticism._

_Well said, Seeker. We mean the slow weaving of a better vessel, one compounded not of gross matter but of mind – a quintessential body, a fit lantern for the Force to shine within. _

_And of what is such a form made?_

_Of contemplation, what else? The mind fashions its own immortality when it is lifted to the highest planes and dwells there. The individual's unswerving devotion to unitary light is his highest self, and this may survive when the dross of corporeality burns away, a second body woven of naught but Light. You look upon such a one now._

_Yes, my Master. I do not doubt your words._

_Yet you hesitate, Seeker. What is it?_

_I fear to commit the error of presumption… but I must speak._

_Then unburden yourself, and be corrected if you have wandered into error._

"_Yes, Master. My heart tells me there is another way – another path to this same state. Can the self not be yoked to its true source through compassion as well? _

_Compassion, you say. Attachment binds us to the wheel of becoming. _

_But not always, Master. Not always. Is it not possible that compassion is what defines the self most truly? And that such devotion itself weaves a vessel of Light, a form such as your own? Are we not most truly ourselves when we … love?_

_Ah, Seeker. Alas. You are a maverick to your very core. _


	16. Chapter 16

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 16**

He could not make out every clipped phrase of the murmured altercation, but its salient features were conveyed to him clearly through the Force's tympanum. He could feel the earnest entreaty behind a soft speech of Nield's, the incredulity lurking within Cerasi's reply, the yearning for solidarity both felt but neither expressed, the fear running like a panicked rodent beneath the ebb and flow of their exchange.

Perhaps it would be best not to interfere. A word of farewell seemed in order, but Obi-Wan had no desire to be on the receiving end of another retributory backhand from Cerasi. His new role as Nield's ally and conspirator laid him open to a whole range of emotional responses better left unprovoked.

He had just turned and softly trod up the adjacent tunnel-alley, when the unmistakable swoosh of a rusting pneumatic door echoed behind him, swiftly followed by urgent footfalls.

"Wait! Obi-Wan. Don't go quite yet."

He halted, permitting Cerasi time to catch him up. "I need to be on my way. I simply wished to thank the Young for their hospitality.. and to wish you well, should I – well."

She blinked in the dim illumination, stepping closer to have a good look at his face. "You think you might not come back."

"It is possible."

Cerasi sucked in a deep breath, and fussed over her worn garments, pulling straight some minor detail which had been set awry, smoothing the creases where her belt cinched the faded fabric. "You get Nield all fired up, you come up with grandiose schemes to stop this threat, this infestation – you save me, you save those children… and then you just _leave?_ I don't understand you."

"There is something I must do. It's dangerous; I may not return." His reply was circumscribed by necessity, sealed by blunt fact. What more could there be to explain?

Cerasi stepped closer, crossing the invisible demarcation of his personal space. He retreated, automatically, _stay centered guard up think defensively. "_You need to come back." Cerasi's eyes were filmed with bright conviction, a glimmering need.

His left boot heel brushed against the wall behind them. _Parry block evade regroup stay centered._ "Well, I'll certainly do my best," he drawled, humor edging its way past her too-proximate need.

"This is not funny." Her hands were now smoothing _his_ clothing, picking at a threadbare patch, pulling a sleeve straight. "I know you're special, some kind of prodigy, _Jedi_ trained, whatever that means…. But don't throw your life away."

"Sometimes sacrifices must be made." If only she knew. Thank the Force she didn't know.

Cerasi leaned in closer, and he retreated full into the wall. "We need you here." Her fingers had migrated to his face, rendering the situation all the more confusing.

"I need to go," he asserted , authoritatively, gently pushing her away. "I only came to express my thanks and to say farewell."

Defeated, she folded her arms and regarded him morosely. "How do Jedi part ways?"

He bowed. "May the Force be with you."

Cerasi nodded thoughtfully. "May the Force be with you, Obi-Wan."

As he strode purposefully down the cramped corridor, her last whispered words carried to his ears on a faint reverberation. "Come back safely."

* * *

Melida and Daan forces were gathered, crouched and hidden in street and alley, arrayed upon rooftops, milling in abandoned warehouses. Every able-bodied man and woman – and some children, youths barely old enough to be taken on missions as Jedi padawans – must have been mustered for this battle, not a soul left behind to tend the wounded or dead. An air of abandon hung about the massive edifice, the wild exhilaration of those who have nothing left to lose.

Obi-Wan crept unnoticed through the ranks of scouts and watchmen, veiled in the Force, intent upon his own errand. The last raging embers of sunset still burned on the far horizon; no star had yet appeared to ornament the purpling sky beyond. There was a little time before true nightfall – he was not yet tardy.

Somewhere between one shadow and the next, he all but ran into Dooku.

The Sentinel's iron grip settled upon his shoulder, and they slid together beneath a gutted portico."When the moment comes, do not _hesitate,"_ the older Jedi warned him in a sibilant whisper.

"Do or do not. There is no try. I am ready, Master."

"I can sense your qualms, " Dooku pressed, the other hand grasping at his arm now. "He is too dangerous to live. Surrender is not an option."

"I understand, Master."

"Good. I will give the signal to attack in twenty standard minutes; his reserves will be dedicated to repelling the siege. Act swiftly and this matter will be resolved before too _many_ lives are lost."

Obi-Wan gazed out into the darkling city, the jagged sculpture garden of its ruinous bones. How many hundreds, thousands, waited there to be slaughtered? "You will order a retreat when he is… gone?"

"There is no need to prolong the exercise needlessly. But it is still to be seen whether the leaders will respect my command; to them I am but an anomaly, one whose loyalties they cannot place."

The padawan snorted. He could sympathize with the insurgents' leadership on that count.

An almost brutal shake brought his attention back to the odious duty at hand. "Your focus has been severely lacking since we set foot on this wretched cesspool," Dooku hissed. "Remedy the deficiency at once. Too much is at stake."

The young Jedi knocked the older man's hands away. "I know that, _Master."_

They glared at one another in the obscuring gloom, mental shields tightly enforced, rigid postures mirroring the other's tension.

"Very well. Go then."

And Obi-Wan went, without further encouragement or advice, or any word of benediction.

After all, this was _his_ battle. And he would face it on his own terms.

* * *

Kar'Thon was indeed waiting for him, just below the southern gate. On this side, the compound's austere walls were unalleviated by window or architectural detail; neither guard-post nor escape route presented itself to view. A desolate stretch of stone extended to the left and right, a stark white where glow-lamps pooled sharp-edged radiance against the its blank expanse.

"Jedi _karbuku,"_ the squat Darshiki grunted. "You are late."

"On _time_ is determined by my arrival, don't you think?" Obi-Wan leaned in closer to his grotesque liegeman. "And I didn't authorize you to transact with anyone besides myself."

The diminutive assassin offered him an insolent shrug. "You hold my life-debt, he holds yours."

"Not _exactly."_ The padawan clamped down a flare of vexation.

"Your _Master_," the Darshiki argued.

"It's not the same," his companion snapped.

"Lord of my lord," Kar'Thon insisted. He shoved a tendon-knotted hand at the learner's braid, dangling beside his interlocutor's face. "You wear the mark of your shame. I obey _your_ master."

"_Fine."_ There wasn't time to parse out the chain of command and its concomitant complexities. "Can you get me in or not? And I need that code key for the inner doors."

But Kar'Thon, unfailingly forthright, had more to say on the subject. "You. Idiot Jedi _karbuku. _ Fail and my life is forfeit."

"Yes, I'm aware of that." Obi-Wan raised his brows, sardonic. "I'm rather in the same boat myself."

A grudging nod of admission. The Darshiki's reptilian eyes slatted into calculating slits. "East wing, control room sits above factory floor. Guards posted at each door, pair inside and out. Use lift shaft between levels."

The Force remained steady, flowing strongly between them, unruffled by ambiguous desires. However rudely he might couch his directives, Kar'Thon _was _ determined to fulfill Dooku's orders to the letter. The young Jedi nodded, satisfied with his interlocutor's honest intentions, pleased and surprised at the gift of vital information. "Thank you. I will remember this service."

Kar'Thon bowed, keyed open the blast-shielded gate, and slunk away on his own business. Obi-Wan ducked into the pitch darkness beyond, creeping through disused passages toward his goal, heart racing to a valiant martial tune, the driving rhythm of his resolve.

* * *

Once relieved of Kar'Thon's uncongenial company, he made swift progress, penetrating deep into enemy territory before he encountered the first set of doors at the intersection of two major passageways. The guards were easily distracted, sent scuttling down the connecting corridor with a Force-engendered sound at its far end. By the time they had investigated the non-existent disturbance, the young Jedi had keyed the portal open and passed through.

The sentinels on its other side were summarily flung aside, crashing into the walls to left and right. They slumped gracelessly to the floor, their pallid, pustulent skin a garish green-white under the artificial lamps. Obi-Wan grimaced in distaste and stepped over the bodies-

-"Blast it!"

A rotting hand had seized about his ankle; apparently the sheer brutal power of his attack, sufficient to knock a Gamorrean out cold, had little effect upon the Fallen. Onescrabbled for his blaster, and the other for a comm device. Two 'sabers spat into life; one strike cleaved through the wrist holding the communicator, another deflected a clumsy shot aimed at the intruder's head. But the lumbering animated corpses merely ound their feet and charged at him, weapons ready.

Cut and cut; the hands holding the blasters were severed, thumping to the hard floor in unison. Neither guard stopped or issued any sound, nether face registered the slightest degree of pain, neither body stopped surging forward, though they now had but one hand between them. The Force echoed hollow, chill and void of life.

"_For the love of-"_

Two heads toppled, bouncing softly upon the decks, and were joined by slumping torsos and legs, their expressionless faces quickly obscured by the mangled bodies.

Panting, Obi-Wan backed away down the hall, blades still pulsing bright in his hands.

He half expected the decapitated Fallen to rise and chase after him.

_Focus. Focus._

There was no shame in fleeing up the corridor, because he was already in a hurry.

* * *

Two more hallways; three more doors. Kar'Thon's passkey overrode locks, granted him access to the inner sanctum, ushered him inevitably further into the heart of the fortress. Behind him he left the dismembered and mangled evidence of his egress, a reeking trail of Fallen Ones, the guards he had overpowered at each successive junction. Obi-Wan closed his mind to the image of their leering severed heads, the stench of their already putrid flesh. It was a mercy that a lightsaber cauterized where it touched, that the arc-wave plasma blade had no physical _edge_ to stain with gore.

He had never dealt out so many _sai chai _ blows in the course of any fight, any single period of combat, whether in practice or in earnest. Every strike rang a deep gong note of foreboding within him, harsh reminder of duty. A cold sweat slicked the 'saber hilts in his hands, trickled beneath the collar of his borrowed shirt.

The lift shaft was sealed, but a judicious use of the Force pried the panels apart. He dropped into the empty space beyond, landing in a crouch above the compartment, one hand tracing over the mag-field generator atop the roof. One swift saber thrust through the housing would bring the lift to a screeching halt. He hunkered down and waited, quieting his mind into the faintest breeze upon the Force's placid surface, his touch so light he left not a ripple, not a reflection in its fathomless limpidity.

Distant, outward, he sensed the eruption of violence, the siege under way, the confusion and dismay of the Melida and Daan as hordes of dead comrades issued form the gates to meet their challenge, the cacophony of firearms, the cries of battle. Nearer, within the massive walls of the fortress, machinery and shuffling minions, a drone of mechnical parts, and the near-drone of the living dead, both dull textures within the life energy, lightless rhythms, the drudgery of the automated realm. And then-

There. Close by… coming nearer.. yes.

He drew in a sharp breath, the tang of a living presence – and a hard-edged one, an angry gash like a raw wound, a harsh flame burning in a vacuum, a star crowned in merciless spear-like coronae – almost painful. Yes. It was he.

He was coming.

A sudden clenching beneath his ribs, a flood of memory from years ago – a mind probe, so devastating, terrifying – a desperate chase through tunnel and shaft, murder at his heels- a mocking smile, that fluting reedy voice – Dooku's emerald blade passing clean through a shoulder, a vicious strike – a whipping skirl of dark cloak, retreating footfalls –

And then they were but a meter apart. The lift doors opened, shut, and in the compartment below him stood the one person in the galaxy ultimately responsible for every missing shard in his shattered heart, the dark puppet master behind an endless carnival of evils and deaths, the epitome of treason and sacrilege, so far as his young life had seen either.

A Dark Jedi. Syfo-Dyas himself. At last.

The lift shuddered and slid upward on its magrails, accelerating gently.

One 'saber's thrust through the generator housing brought the spacious cargo box to a grinding halt. A burning circle carved through the roof with furious precision, and a fierce downward kick obliterated the last barrier between hunter and hunted. And a single fluid drop into the confined space below brought him ace to face with his bitterest enemy.

Syfo-Dyas' aristocratic, almost delicate brows rose in surprise when his unexpected visitor landed in a powerful crouch before him, double 'saber blades humming menacingly in the cramped arena. Flinty eyes narrowed, thin lips pursed in anger, long fingers curled in fury – and recognition.

Obi-Wan bared his teeth in a charmingly feral grin. "Hello there."


	17. Chapter 17

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 17**

_Now then, Seeker, propound your heresy to this entire assembly, and hear the counsel of the Whills._

_My masters… I am overwhelmed by your presence._

_Do fear us or falter now, Seeker. We are many, but we are also one, one with that which binds and penetrates us all. Speak now and be heard._

_Yes, Master.. this then is what I must ask you. We have spoken of immortality, of a body and individuality beyond the borders of corporal death. You have opened my eyes to the way of contemplation, the narrow path. But is there not another means by which a permanent anchor in the Light may be forged? _

_Explain._

_The Living Force raises many beings into existence, growing and unfurling reflections of itself, things nourished by its supernal sun. Those that turn their faces toward Light itself, like the heliotrope, are blessed, and partake of its gifts in a higher manner. But are we not also the tenders of this garden? Do we not lavish care and nurturing upon its flowers and vines, gently training them upon the trellis of discipline, pouring waters of wisdom upon them, pruning away weeds and sheltering them with our own lives? This is compassion, and for each of us, this compassion is directed towards different particulars. _

_So it may be described._

_Then the character of our compassion – its very objects – are another definition of our truest self. For we are both our unique perspective within the Force, and our unique relation to others within it. We are knowledge and we are compassion. And the latter may just as easily define our everlasting self as the former, for at root they are one._

_You speak of love, Seeker._

_It was not always forbidden. I speak of Life._

_You would turn from the sure path we have laid before you and tread this strange way, seeking purification through attachment?_

_Not attachment; service. To love is to tend the Force's garden. To be the instrument of its will, its emissary and humblest tool. Is this not a form of contemplation itself? A contemplation of the heart?_

_And what would you have of us? This is not the way of the Whills, though perhaps it is a way of Light._

_Give me your blessing, my Masters, and I will depart._

* * *

Syfo-Dyas' mouth quirked into a frigid smile at the greeting. He folded his pale manicured hands into his lap, amid folds of black cloth – and it was at this moment that Obi-Wan's racing mind registered the fact that the tall, thin-boned man sat upon a hoverchair, legs tucked under him much as Master Yoda was wont to do.

A reedy voice, treble undertones belying cold intent, a quiet musical sound in stark contrast to the fallen Shadow's nature. "_Kenobi."_ A voiceless chuckle. "I will confess, I am taken off guard. You are not whom I expected."

The padawan raised both blades, twin sapphire brands burning in his hands, two lines of harsh justice waiting to fall.

"What are you going to do, young one? Kill me in cold blood?" The former Jedi master sat placidly upon his hovering conveyance, hands folded, making no move to draw his own weapon, barely flinching beneath the threat hanging over his silvering head. His delicate-boned face, with its thin nose and slanted eyes, was cast in lurid blue highlight, his black robes patterned with thrumming radiance. "That is not the Jedi way."

"Traitor!" Obi-Wan growled. "You deserve no such courtesy."

His opponent sighed theatrically and raised his hands palms upward. "Dooku has indoctrinated you thoroughly, I see. What hope have I of correcting such ingrained error? If I am to die, then strike me down here and now. Do not prolong the agony of anticipation."

The mocking lilt to his voice was unmistakable.

"Well, boy? What are you waiting for? I assure you, I have no regrets upon my conscience, nothing for which to plead pardon. I am ready to meet _my_ destiny – it is you who hesitate."

Obi-Wan shifted grip. The man was _unarmed,_ _unresisting…_ possibly injured or crippled, as the hoverchair suggested. His breath ratcheted into a harsh rhythm, contrapuntal to the low hum of his 'sabers. _Do or do not. Do or do not._

"Surrender."

"What? Inside my own fortified citadel? Surrounded by my own guards? You permit the advantage of stealth to slip through you r fingers with every passing second… soon enough, Kar'Thon will have this lift functional again and a legion of mercenaries on each floor. You must secure victory in one move or be captured yourself. Surely Yan has tutored you in dejarik better than this?" A smirk hovered around the edges of the words, contemptuous.

"Kar'Thon," the young Jedi stuttered, heart skipping a beat. He had sensed _integrity, _ not deception. The lift seemed to jolt beneath them, the world contract to a throbbing singularity of betrayal.

"Yes. When he said Dooku's vassal was on his way to kill me, I expected Yarriss Moll or one of the others, not _you. _But this has been a delightful reunion."

The Darkshiki had violated the terms of his own life-debt. It seemed impossible, an incalculable departure from expectation.

"There are loyalties that outweigh the demands of honor," Syfo-Dyas murmured, softly. "You are too naïve to understand this – yet."

The 'sabers pulsed in unison, raw and vibrant, the stagnant air within the lift already scented of ozone and the hot effluvia of their blades. _One strike._

"Well, Obi-Wan Kenobi? What is it to be? If you fancy yourself the _blade of Light,_ then strike and strike well. I grow weary of waiting for death."

The dull chamber was abruptly peopled with phantoms and memory: Tahl's haggard face as she lay dying in Qui-Gon's arms; Zan Arbor's cruel laboratory; Bruck Chun's white corpse crumpled upon the rocks at a waterfall's base; Xanatos Du Crion begging for release; Qui-Gon Jinn descending into oblivion, spirit broken; and faces, faces, faces, innumerable suffering beings, world after world, far and near, past and present.

The torrent of rage all but choked him. _Traitorous, Force-damned vessel of Darkness._

He had but to _strike,_ part that vile, smiling head from its shoulders and be done.

He trembled, eyes meeting the cold gaze of his enemy, his fury mirrored in their passionless and frigid depths. And there he beheld himself, present fire tempered and hardened into merciless ice, into night without end, his heart no longer a winged flame but an avenging angel.

"No," he whimpered.

He stepped back a single pace, blades sinking into open-defensive stance, chest heaving as he struggled for air. No. No. No. It was not the Jedi way.

Syfo-Dyas smiled knowingly. "Checkmate."

And denial erupted into molten agony; floor, ceiling and walls of the cramped box crackled with electrical tongues of fire, blue lightning sizzling randomly over every surface, seeking grounding. The shadow swathed in black, safe upon its hovering oasis, watched emotionlessly as its victim arched backward convulsively, bucked, writhed, screamed in a paroxysm of agony, and then fell unconscious to the deck. He waved a hand to cut short the brutal influx of voltage, and sighed, shaking his head over the inert and smoking form lying crumpled upon the floor beneath him.

He made a small clucking noise at the back of his throat and signaled for Kar'Thon to reactivate the lift.

* * *

_You are certain of this, Seeker?_

_Yes, my Master. I have found what I sought. _

_But this is not our teaching, though very like. You have innovated, or else wandered into folly._

_I will tread my path. Your teachings have set me down this road; if our ways part here, I am forever grateful to you for your guidance._

_You speak of guidance yet you persist in seeking your own._

_That of the Light, Master. I have at last found my way. I intend no disrespect._

_Ah, Seeker… you are the last to seek out the counsel of the Whills… and yet you deviate at the last crossroads. Perhaps it is a sign, Not even we know all things; it is possible the Balance is again shifting._

_Then you will release me, Master?_

_It would seem, rebel, that I have no choice. May the Force be with you, and bring illumination. If you find truth on your path, then we will meet again hereafter._

_Thank you, my Master._

* * *

"… uungh... Master?"

Laughter like knifing hail pummeled against his bleary senses, offering neither comfort nor counsel. Obi-Wan squirmed, vainly attempting to extricate himself from aching discomfort, and then stilled, squinting as the indifferent miasma of blurred color rendered itself into painful striations, moving shapes.

Where? What? The Force lapped at him, a gentle tide, its murmuring susurration hypnotic, inviting sleep…

"Sir lord. Now what to do? Here are Jedi's weapons."

Kar'Thon's rasping and guttural tones jerked him back to semi-awareness. "Traitor!" he spat, the word slurring into the crumbling detritus of sensation.

"You are surpassingly fond of that epithet," a fluting voice observed.

Syfo-Dyas. Vestigial fear lanced through him, solidifying sound and color into _things,_ jolting him back into the body as an adrenaline surge flooded his viscera. For a moment he was fourteen and at the Shadow's mercy, his mind flayed apart by searching claws…

_Traitor, traitor, traitor. _ "You are surpassingly worthy of it," he snipped. Calming breath. Center. Release. The Force.

"I see Dooku has failed to domesticate you," Syfo-Dyas replied, levelly. "But I am not intimidated by a challenge."

Kar'Thon shuffled about, at the periphery of vision. Obi-Wan grunted, shifting again- this time with better coordination – only to discover that he was, predictably, restrained.

Well, that was inconvenient. The Force leapt and whirled, responsive to his will. He summoned it, hoarded it, banked its fires within himself. Vision and hearing sharpened, his surroundings fell into clarity. Observe. Be patient. Act when opportunity presents itself.

"There's no need for a dramatic escape attempt," the fallen Sentinel informed him, academically. "Your powers, lamentably, are no match for mine."

Which vexatiously supercilious statement had the additional detriment of being _true._

Still, he had the advantage of tenacity. "Traitor," he drawled.

A bony hand closed hard around his jaw, fingers digging in with bruising strength. His head was turned to one side, the dangling learner's braid wrapped three times around long fingers and then allowed to slip free, slowly, threateningly. "Do you think Yan will come to fetch his property back? You are an expensive kind of collateral – I am flattered."

"By all means, wallow in narcissism. Traitor."

The painful hold was released. "You don't seem to understand your own predicament."

Good point. A quick assessment of his person and surroundings confirmed that he might have mildly underestimated the problem. The after-effects of the sustained electrical shock finally smoothed away by the Force, he was able to take stock of his present situation. He had been divested of weapons, belt and equipment, and the Darshiki talisman that signified Kar'Thon's life debt. This latter item he spotted hanging round its proper owner's squat neck, the hand-crafted pendant seeming to mock him from the end of its thin cord. Besides these acts of petty thievery, his captors had also pinned him by wrists and ankles to some infernally hard surface, a horizontal slab of metal or stone. Overhead trestles and roof paneling were visible past the glare of flood illuminators; the echo of a vast factory floor suggested that he was presently inside the…

_Oh, Hells. Not good._

He started struggling in earnest then, bringing the Force to bear upon the thick bands about his extremities. One brief burst of effort and –

He was slammed back down by an invisible fist, one that drove hard into his solar plexus and knocked his skull against the hard table with deafening force. A second bodiless fist seemed to close round his windpipe, squeezing away breath and compacting vision into a field of swimming dark spots.

And then a very real, solid fist connected with his groin, eliciting a strangled yelp of protest and paralyzing him with a new flood of agony.

"Son of vetch Jedi _karbuku," _the Darshiki spat at him, having thus emphatically delivered his point.

"Now, now," Syfo-Dyas intervened. "There is no need to be uncivilized. I would prefer you cooperate, Kenobi. I need your help."

"I would rather _die!"_ Obi-Wan managed to gasp.

A thin chuckle, double edged and laced with hidden poison. "That really isn't an option for you, at this point."

Something told the young Jedi he really didn't want to know what that meant.


	18. Chapter 18

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 18**

Kar'Thon readjusted the restraints, tightening the heavy bands to a painfully narrow girth. Obi-Wan flexed his fingers, feeling the circulation constricted already. Breathe. Breathe. The noises of the factory floor clanged and echoed about them, a harsh precipitation of sound.

"I am not a cruel man," Sydo-Dyas asserted, lingering nearby. There was no evidence of the hoverchair, telling his captive that the episode in the lift had been well-orchestrated and planned in cold blood. Had his _failure _to act been foreseen? Were his motivations and shatter-points so easily dissected as all that?

"You are not without talent," the Shadow reassured him. "But you are young, and therefore predictable. Transparent, even."

This last remark was accompanied by a serrated mental probe, an adder-like strike upon his shields. The struggle lasted several minutes, the Force churned into turgidity by their contest. At last the Dark Jedi withdrew his psychic assault, chuckling darkly.

"Most impressive. Dooku has taught at least one lesson well."

Obi-Wan panted in the aftermath, head spinning. He was no longer the green novice that had once been eviscerated by a much less strident examination; but resistance against the Force-driven invasion of his mind had severely taxed him. How long would he be able to hold out?

"He taught me not to parley with _traitors."_

A long suffering sigh. "Yan is short-sighted, for a man of his intelligence. He terms treason what the wise would call prudence. Tell me, Kenobi, are you still visited by visions from the Unifying Force?"

That was nobody's business but his own. "Perhaps. Why? Do you want your fortune told? I assure you it is both patent and simple."

"You are not in a position to issue threats," the older man reminded his prisoner. "I wondered whether you felt it, too. I think you must. All those gifted with premonition must feel the descent of the Mantle."

Obi-Wan's gut twisted. "What are you talking about?" he snorted, ignoring the inner pang of certitude.

"The Balance is shifting. Ah, I think you know this, even if you have hitherto lacked words to articulate your insight. The Dark is poised to rise again, and engulf this galaxy. It will take great valor, great daring to stop its usurpation of our civilization. Greater daring than the Jedi Order currently possesses."

"The Jedi do not-"

"I saw it many years ago," Syfo-Dyas continued, interrupting without excuse. "And I believe Dooku has known it just as long. But he would not be persuaded to act upon this knowledge. His arrogance, his presumptive confidence in the Jedi, blinds him. We must surpass our ancient enemy in cunning and ruthlessness if victory is to be secured." He leaned in close, a fanatical light kindling in his pale eyes. "Do you know what is coming? Have you Seen it?"

Obi-Wan squirmed. "No."

"Liar. _They_ will rise again… they are upon the threshold of revealing themselves. And in their wake marches a mindless army – a legion of darkness. The Republic will be reduced to barbarous tyranny, its light snuffed out in an instant, unless a commensurate host is mustered. Who shall fight for us?"

"The Jedi –"

"Are nothing. Already our ranks dwindle. Our light is all but gone from the universe. Our last task must be to usher in a new age, one in which the Republic may defend itself, take up arms on its own behalf, stand against its own downfall. I have labored _ceaselessly _for this one end."

The young Jedi stared, appalled. Ravening madness circled about him, pacing like a colwar. "An army. An army of perfect soldiers. Obedient, fearless, indestructible. We have tried many ways… "

Mind-wipe conditioning. Zan Arbor's experiments. Mergumm's elite training camps. The Fallen Ones… "You are _lost!_ You cannot conquer evil through greater evil!" It was unspeakable blasphemy, an insult to the Light itself.

Syfo-Dyas sighed. "Even the Fallen have not been a success as I wished. I had hoped the secrets of Dathomir would yield better results, but…" He waved a hand at the surrounding machinery, the open rafters above. "All it has created is a horde of imbeciles, a self-replicating plague. I shall leave it to fester its way into oblivion on this world and move on. There is still _one_ other possibility… though it may yet take some time to come to fruition."

Obi-Wan's head was throbbing now, mind frantically weaving the threads of this rant into some kind of coherence. "We," he grated out. "We? Who is we? You have allies – allies inside the Republic – investors, supporters. Who are they?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" his captor sneered. "They are the true hope for our future, the beacon torches of a new Order."

Treason, conspiracy, despair… the Republic was rotted to its heartwood, corrupt and undead as the shuffling zombies born of this man's mania. Darkness laughed and howled, a hysterical chorus taking up the refrain.

Why hadn't he struck the fiend down when he had the chance?

"Don't dwell on the past," Syfo-Dyas advised. "You have a glorious future to embrace."

That did _not_ sound good. He struggled, but the ex-Sentinel held him in an unremitting Force-grip, leaving nothing to chance. Syfo-Dyas raised a hand, stroking his wisping beard thoughtfully. "Can you feel the progress of Dooku's little rebellion?"

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, refusing the bait – but despite his obstinate refusal, the awareness was forced upon him, thrust down his gullet whether he wanted it or not. An iron vise wrenched his mind whither it would, demanding that he attend to the riotous, blood-soaked chaos erupting outside the fortress' walls.

"I have given my forces leave to kill every last one of the seditionists – enough of this generations old civil war. Soon there will be no Melida and no Daan, only Fallen Ones. And soon after that, they will begin to eat at each other, like a cancer turning inward. I would guess within the space of a standard year this world will be utterly spent and not a living soul left upon it. I had a mind at first to simply destroy this experiment, and depart quietly – failure ought not to be memorialized…. But I have changed my mind. I think I shall instead leave its scar as testimonial to Dooku's skill. A mark of dishonor, if you will."

Obi-Wan flinched at the sheer vitriol behind these last words. The two Sentinels had a score to settle, beyond their conflict of ideals. "Master Dooku does not-"

"Oh, he cares. Don't let him deceive you. I know him _well."_

Kar'Thon trundled forward, accompanied by the primitive med-droid Obi-Wan had seen in the course of his initial reconnaissance. "Sir lord. Your instructions done. Ready."

"Ah. Excellent." Syfo-Dyas thrust his elegant hand into an interior pocket and drew out a small, beautifully crafted knife.

"That's mine!"

"Vespari steel. Rare, priceless, esoterically significant, bestowed only upon the most worthy. I doubt you earned this in your own right… a gift from a doting fool to his foremost idolater, perhaps?"

The memory was aligned with others more painful. And the sacred significance of that unbreakable blade was, again, none of the Dark Jedi's affair. Obi-Wan favored him with a look of withering disdain.

"It doesn't matter. It will serve the purpose. I owe your present master more than one injury." The former Sentinel grasped a handful of his prisoner's shirt and deftly drew the blade through the worn fibers, splitting it as easily as a muja fruit's fragile rind. He traced one cold finger down the young Jedi's chest, following the now hairline scar left there years ago by his own'saber, a tiny white scrim-work of knitted flesh from collarbone to navel, the Makashi mark of dishonor. "Ah, yes. I think Yan will understand my meaning."

Obi-Wan knew what was coming. He looked away, girding himself with the Force. He would not give any satisfaction.

The twisted former Jedi took his sweet time artistically re-opening the old wound, the Vespari knife's triple forged blade leaving a painstaking scarlet calligraphy in its wake. He surveyed his handiwork with critical abstraction , then wiped the edge clean on his victim's trousers. "So you _can_ hold your tongue," he remarked, with a caustic smile. "Master and apprentice are often bound by an immaterial connection… Do you suppose Dooku _felt_ that, hm?"

It hurt like Sith hells, but not as badly as the original 'saber burn had. Deep centering breaths. Accept, release. Blood pooled in his navel and overflowed, dribbled in hot rivulets over his ribs and along the swell in his throat. He seized a loosely moored crane arm with the Force and sent it careening with deadly accuracy into his tormentor's head –

Only to stop in midair a centimeter short of its target, Syfo-Dyas' pale eyes hardened. "Such parlor tricks are beneath you," he chided. "Kar'Thon."

The Darshiki bowed low in obeisance, proffering a small vial of green-hued liquid to his superior.

Obi-Wan tensed, despite himself. The Force roiled with acute warning.

"Ah, you recognize this, then? You've been snooping in my private affairs before this? I am impressed – but all the better that you understand. The secret of this _art_ was imparted to me by Mother Talzin of the Dathomiri Sisterhood, in exchange for certain other information of value to her. It's effects have proved less potent than its originators promised – but I have no doubt it will prove efficacious in this instance." He sloshed the contents of the small cylinder, then carefully unstoppered it. Sickly green mist seemed to rise from within the narrow vessel's confines, a sluggish coil of Dark energy.

"My army of the undead is a marvelous composition of Force manipulation and modern technology. This …witch's brew… reanimates a fresh corpse to some fleeting degree – the ways of the Dark side are astounding, some might say _unnatural – _while the biocompatible nanodroids colonize the central nervous system, governing the gross motor centers and brain activity through impulse programming. The results you have seen already: the marriage of two sciences is volatile, lamentably unstable. However," - he inserted a rhetorical caesura – "the process has yet to be applied to a living being, much less a Force-sensitive."

There was no civil reply appropriate to such a thinly veiled threat. "You vile son of a Sith whore. Go preach your drivel to the denizens of whatever pustulent hell-hole spawned you."

Syfo-Dyas brushed aside the insult. "I see you have been keeping company with Kar'Thon." The vial of liquid tilted, the first droplets bulging suspended upon the rim. "Congratulations, Padawan. You are about to take your first steps into a much wider world."

The first spatter of liquid burned like corrosive acid where it touched the open wound; the drizzle of fire traveled the length of the cut, a bubbling froth erupting where the potion blended with warm blood, molten fury seeping into exposed flesh, needling through nerve and bone, spreading instantly, obliteratingly to spine and limbs, lancing through skull, eyes, ears, imploding into a knot of thrashing, furious serpents gnawing into blood and brain.

The Dark sank like blackest ink into a clear pool, churning and clotting as it mixed with pure waters, Light refracted, shattered, obscured, tormented by the pollution. Obi-Wan screamed, and screamed, resolve crushed to nothingness by the incomprehensible violation of his spirit. Green mist seemed to fill his lungs, drown him, choke his life off; he floundered, fought, writhed with every fiber of his strength, his soul retreating inward, embattled Light taking refuge in its inmost sanctuary while pillaging fire laid low all else.

The pain subsumed every other insult to his flesh; he barely felt the invasive arms of the droid as it seized him, injected the nanodroids with ruthless precision; he only dimly registered Kar'Thon's rough grip loosing his bonds and pulling his seizing body off the raised platform, did not understand the orders barked out by Syfo-Dyas, the lurching journey to some dank and forgotten cell in the fortress' bowels, the echo of his own moans against the unfeeling walls of his prison.

When the initial agony subsided into utter fatigue and aching lassitude, he curled on his side like a beaten animal and slid into blackest oblivion.


	19. Chapter 19

**Lineage X**

**Chapter 19**

* * *

He woke into paradise.

The skies of some unnamed world circled lazily overhead, their cloud-fretted dome close enough to touch, crossed and buttressed by the arches of a graceful roof, the tracery of some ancient artisanship now reduced to moss-limned majesty. Rain fell upon his upturned face, a warm benediction settling in his beard, upon his crooked nose, upon parched lips and lined brow, upon the silvering mane of hair spread beneath him. Flutterwings skimmed by, pausing amicably above him, and then moving on again, the gorgeous calligraphy upon their wings a poem in color and line, an unknown koan.

He breathed: in, out. The world shifted and rearranged itself as he sat up, shaking limbs reluctant to bear even this weight. He wrapped arms about bony knees, awareness dropping from the greenery and moisture all around to his own center. His belly growled and ached, empty as the cavernous blue-violet sky. His heart pounded against the architecture of his ribs, slow and grave, stately. His blood circled, oceanic and mild, carrying a tide of contentment to the far shores of his body. He ran unsteady fingers over his face and found the bones prominent, the skin papery. A languid relief flooded through him, a sense of shipwreck and survival. He laid back down when dizziness claimed him.

How long had he been here? How long since he had eaten?

Eat, his stomach commanded. Eat now. Eat soon.

He rolled over, and clambered weakly onto hands and knees. Deep physical knowledge told him he had fasted time out of mind, far beyond what nature could sustain, perhaps fed by the Force itself. He stayed there, kneeling, unable to stand, the giddy reeling of his world sufficient warning not to attempt it.

He crawled, then, like a babe in changing cloths, wobbling toward the bounty around him. A creeping vine offered him luscious berries. He supped upon them. Further on, a fragrant flower he knew to be edible. A fruit, fallen from an orchard tree overhead. He scented it, breathed in the ambrosial spice of its skin, broke the thin parchment with his teeth. Juice flowed down his chin, down his throat. He groaned in pleasure, consumed the whole. There were nuts down the path, and then an herb, hot and bitter, purgative. He chewed it contemplatively.

Belly full, he lapped at water pooling in an eroded paving stone. It was sweet, mineral laden, most exquisite wine, life fallen from the heavens.

He rolled over upon his back, spread-eagled beneath sheltering trees, beneath a riotous garden, untouched Living splendor, and let sleep claim him again.

* * *

When Obi-Wan woke, he was shivering with cold. His torn clothing was damp with bitter sweat, the tang of fear upon him repulsive even to his own nostrils. He rolled onto aching knees, bracing his arms against the smooth floor, shuddering. Waves of heat cascaded over his prickling flesh, leaving an icy chill in their wake. His head pounded a sharp accompaniment to his rapid pulse. Fever. That was bad.

He gingerly ran fingers over the scabbing and smeared wound upon his chest and belly. The blood had clotted to a sticky mess, the edges of the gash sloppily clinging to one another, oozing soft tears, white and pink and muddy red. It burned, and agony shot through his frame where he touched it. That was bad, too.

But he could think, a little. And the pain had dissipated into an enervating discomfort, a subliminal itching soreness. He ran both hands through his gritty, sweat soaked hair. Breathe. Accept. Release. Assess.

He was ill, injured, a prisoner, unarmed, and compromised. Also, he had failed his mission most spectacularly.

So much for _assess._

"It doesn't take a genius to describe your situation," a voice said, issuing from somewhere at vision's periphery. A young man's voice, velveted but supple, textured with private ironies.

Obi-Wan did not like the tone this individual took with him. When he turned to look, there was nobody there.

"You should have killed him," the stranger observed, this time directly behind him

He whirled to face his companion, but the cell remained empty. "Jedi do not kill an unarmed prisoner, or any helpless being. Nor do we strike first in aggression, nor do we raise our blade for purpose other than defense of self or other innocent life."

The youth's laugh was musical, and bitter. It echoed off the low ceiling, fractured into soft whispers. "You needn't be a Jedi. Qui-Gon left; why not you?"

He closed his eyes then, knowing this stranger for whom he was, shutting out all distractions. His head hurt, hurt as though it would burst and cleave him in twain, split him down to the core like a felled tree. He doubled over, pressing his forehead against the cold stone. Force help him, he was now _mad. _ Dissociative projection, the mind healers would doubtless term it. Or something like that. But a Jedi could handle it, would still act, secure his own escape, anchor himself in unitary Light and survive to be healed. Madness, like pain, was a salutary presence, a friend telling him he needed rest.

"Oh, you need rest," the stranger-not-stranger agreed, drily. "But I wouldn't put it high on your agenda at the moment."

"I don't need your marginal annotations," he snipped back, irrationally.

"Really? I thought we were smarter than this. If you don't need my input, then how did this happen?"

"Kar'Thon!" he snarled. "And Dooku's plan… ! I – "

Force. He was _talking to himself._ He not only needed rest, he needed a slap upside the head. And a stiff drink. And then a long meditation. Assuming he could extricate himself from this mess first. Sinking to his knees, he shoved the impinging madness- brain fever, delirium, whatever it was, out of his mind. Focus. Breathe out anxiety, breathe in strength, clarity, purpose.

"Purpose is what landed you in this whole blasted situation, you know."

Clutching at his head, he whirled to face the non-existent devil's advocate. "Enough!_"_

"Qui-Gon would never have asked this of you."

"Qui-Gon is _dead!"_

"And that's the one thing you don't have the courage to face. You can't accept his death, or Tahl's, or even Xanatos or Bruck's. You can't accept that the Young will die, no matter what anyone does to help. You can't so much as _deal out_ death to one who deserves it above all. You're pathetic and weak and useless." A wry snort. "I should know."

For stars' sake - "_Shut up!_" His own voice hit the far wall and broke into splinters, a discordant kaleidoscope of sound. Imagine the look on Ben To Li's face if he could –

"You needn't shout. I'm merely trying to approach this predicament in a reasonable manner."

Oh, _that_ was rich. "Good job," he deadpanned, staggering to his feet. Pacing might help, if he could stay upright.

Which he couldn't.

"Blast it to the _nine hells!"_

His head hurt, his body hurt, he was bleeding, he was sick, he was injured, he was imprisoned. And apparently also quite insane. _Calm yourself, Obi-Wan. Focus. Use the Force. Think, think, think._

But some things truly didn't bear thinking about.

* * *

When he woke again, he had the strength to stand. He wobbled to his own feet, knock kneed and unsure of gravity, a newborn calf dropped to earth minutes before. The garden throve about him, its swelling, sweet chime-notes sparkling in his blood. Life pulsed and flowed, a river without end, scintillating, holding all things suspended within its limpid currents. He yawned, the thrumming behind his eardrums joined to the soundless antiphony.

Now, upright, he could take stock of his condition better. Muscles were wasted beneath his skin, his ribs and even hipbones startlingly prominent. He was half-starved, a hermit at the terminus of some astounding feat of asceticism, some holy deprivation. He rubbed a hand over his chin and found his beard long and matted, tangled with briar and seed pod. His hair, likewise, a knotted mess, a mare's nest of fantastic proportion. And his skin was darkened not with sun exposure but filth, the crusted sediment of long cycles. He had all but morphed into a wild man, a forest spirit. It made him laugh, a wheezing bellows' sound, the first creak of a long-rusted gate.

He found water gathered between two roots and laved his face, drank deeply. The sky wheeled, the garden unfurled and grew. Time… was meaningless. The Force surrounded him, poured Light down upon him, nourished his deepest roots. He sank into a profound meditative trance, here at his second beginning, and waited.

For her.

* * *

He waited an interminable aeon for the inevitable; yet, when his solitude was ultimately interrupted, it still took him aback. He gasped audibly when the pneumatic door slid open, a thin energy barrier snapping into place behind the intruder.

Syfo-Dyas' cloaked silhouette darkened his doorstep. "Ah. You survived."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"I thought perhaps you would like to see the results of your master's _strategem._ I am pleased to say that the siege has been repelled, most thoroughly." The former Sentinel withdrew a slim projector plate and keyed the device into life; a shimmering blue panoramic image sprang into existence above it, a wicked thought born full-formed from the mind of a cruel god. Bodies covered the courtyard before the walls, knee deep, piled in crude heaps. The Fallen wended their way among the freshly reaped crop, trudging through stained avenues, among pillars of blaster-cell smoke.

Obi-Wan looked away.

"Was the sacrifice worth the gain?" Syfo-Dyas sneered. "The ends justify the means, Padawan. I hope my demise was bought at a fair price."

"You deserve death."

"Ah…but it is not yours to give, is it?" The silver haired man dropped to one knee, seizing his captive by the hair and twisting his head round until the holo-image was again prominent in his view. "It follows you like carrion after a battle-standard, but you have not the strength to command it, to forge destinies. You are a pawn, a tool in this game. And the next move is _mine."_

They were crouched face-to-face, knee to knee. At such proximity, Syfo-Dyas' presence was a rank and festering wound in the Force, a ragged gash in the universal light. It made the young Jedi's gorge rise. He hiccupped, and then retched, bent over double as dry heaves racked his frame. Fever warped his vision, a cold sweat sheening over the salty dried grit of his previous drenching.

"Ah dear," the ex-Sentinel murmured. "Such a pity." He made some adjustment to his holo device. "Your comm link yielded up a coded frequency – Dooku's, I presume. Let us send a plea for assistance."

This suggestion was accompanied by another brutal mind probe, a shiv burying itself deep in tender flesh, exasperating present illness into acute suffering. Obi-Wan yelled hoarsely, past caring for his shattered dignity, writhing under the invasive scrutiny, vision too blurred by pain and tears to see Dooku's wavering figure appear above the projector plate.

"Yan Dooku. You should never have sent a boy to do a man's work," Syfo-Dyas' reedy voice intoned. "The result lies before you."

A heavy silence, in which detestation settled in the Force like mud sinking to a bog's depths. "I see."

"You once were a keen tactician, as I recall. Perhaps your reliance on a decrepit Order and its prerogatives has blunted the edge of your wit. The assassin you traduced into your service has proved a staunch and loyal servant to my cause; with such allies and apprentices as these, you stand little chance of success."

"Do not weary me with your maundering; what is it you want?" Dooku demanded, tartly.

A short respite; Obi-Wan gasped in relief, raised his head to peer at the cold blue effigy of his mentor. "Master! Don't listen to his lies!"

Both Sentinels ignored him, locked now in mutual repudiation, fully engaged in their own menacing quarrel. "I don't want your padawan, though I am happy to prolong his suffering indefinitely for your sake. An exchange- your liberty for his. I am confident you are familiar with the Precepts."

It was an irremediable stalemate; a Jedi master was duty and honor bound to protect his learner - there was no need to wait upon an answer.

"Four hours." Syfo-Dyas said, severing the connection. "Come unarmed."


	20. Chapter 20

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 20**

"This is all your own fault, you know."

Obi-Wan pretended to ignore the priggish accusation. After all, there was _nobody there_ to make it. He curled tighter around his center, counting down his Yamalsa centering breath as the muscle spasm stretched into infinity, contorting his limbs into a crooked ball. The nano-droids, he assumed, were responsible for this new phase of discomfort. _Colonization of the central nervous system, _that was how Syfo-Dyas had described their effect. _Stimulus of gross motor centers, via impulse something something programming…_

"You can't _think_ your way out of this one," his cynical alter ego observed, lackadaisically. "Feel, don't think. Remember? That was always one of Qui-Gon's favorites."

"I'm _feeling_ it, thank you." Stars, what a snotty barve the Other was.

He needed to get out, he needed help that wasn't available to hand, he needed a mind healer, and probably the ordinary variety of medico as well. Presuming he came out of this alive. A grunting exhalation, as the cramping intensified again. How _long_ would his limbs be paralyzed by constricting knots? Surely this was antecedent to some other evil effect, and yet he would gladly upgrade to the next phase just for some _relief –_

"I've wondered about the Trial of Flesh for a long while. I mean, how far can that go? Or do I want to know? Sometimes a padawan _dies_ during his Trials. We've all heard the rumors."

"We are _not_ talking about this right now." _Pain pain pain force-forsaken stars' bloody end -_

"Really?" his sardonic interlocutor tossed back. "Self-distraction is an effective management technique."

"You are not _distracting _me. You're vexing me. I'd rather swap ooz-ball scores with an illiterate Outer Rim bigot!"

"There's no need to be rude."

Oh – for the love of – ohhh… "_Kriff,"_ he whimpered. This was profoundly, desperately not good. He reached feebly for the Force, but the plenum itself was rent asunder, turned in upon itself like an akk chasing its tail, green sickly mist and pale dawning light vying for dominance, murky and confused, neither responding to his call. His was a house divided, set at odds with itself.

The Other watched dispassionately. "If the nanodroids truly implant in your nervous system, that would make you more machine than man… perhaps death would be preferable."

"Suicide is not the Jedi way. Nor is despair."

"And how far has the Jedi way got you thus far?" A richly ironic query.

Which is when he unleashed the howling protestations he had been biting back all this time; the brazen and cracking sound of his own misery did, after all, drown out that unwelcome voice.

* * *

Her voice fell like a small stone into a tranquil pool, the initial startling eruption upon the unruffled surface spreading in perfect circles, one upon another, from center to periphery, expanding in silent unison like the soundless chiming of a deep bell.

"Qui-Gon Jinn."

And when she spoke his name, it was more than appellation: it was greeting and accusation and sacred summons. The ripples of remembrance spread inexorably from the three syllables, shaking hidden truths back into consciousness, past and resent and identity and need returned to him in wave upon wave.

He gasped, recalling himself to himself, and looking up into a face more precious to him than any other.

"Tahl…Tahl. How are you here?"

Her brows arched upward, disapproving, Light kindling behind eyes no longer blind, twin sanctuary lanterns. The sapphire nimbus limning her figure shimmered in vexation. "I am here because you are here, Qui-Gon. And you _should not be here."_

Her displeasure was a treasured gift. "I have found the answer, Tahl. I understand, at last. My heart is at peace."

The apparition stamped its foot. "You promised me, Qui-Gon. Have you so easily forgotten?"

"I –"

"Your Padawan! I told you to watch over him! Where is Obi-Wan, _habimah_?"

His shoulders bowed beneath the weight of _that_ memory. "He … he did not come. I asked him, Tahl; I all but pleaded, begged. But he would not."

His protestations availed him nothing. "Obi-Wan is too wise to give up his birthright for your ludicrous quest. You had no right to abandon your vows, the Order, your obligations. You have _strayed far_ this time."

He spread his hands in supplication. "What am I to do? I followed the will of the Living Force-"

"How _dare_ you preach to me of the Living Force!" Tahl stepped nearer, her translucent form a nexus of power, a pillar of placeless Light. "You will return to the Temple, and prostrate yourself before the Council, beg pardon for your folly and rectify this _idiocy._ Turn back upon your rightful path now, Qui-Gon. Before it is too late. Too much depends upon it."

He reached for her, then, soul taut with yearning. Her face softened momentarily, compassion surmounting stern reprimand. "Qui-Gon…. let go."

"But…"

"You have many tasks yet to complete. It is not your time, nor is it ours." Her presence faded, attenuating to an echo of sweet water burbling over smooth river stones, the brush of silk over golden skin, the faint scent of _spicy djo, _robust and alluring.

And she was gone, into the omnipresent, ever-living Force, and he was alone once more beneath the empyrean dome of an alien sky.

* * *

At some point, he must have fallen headlong again into oblivion, for he woke to the ungentle promptings of a metal-tipped boot nudging against his sore ribs.

"Jedi _karbuku._ Get up, idiot."

Obi-Wan slatted open gummy eyes and squinted up at the crouching Darshiki assassin. The energy field across the door had been deactivated; the door's solid panel stood wide. He twitched his fingers experimentally, sucked in a deep breath and found that his diaphragm did not spasm, groaned ….

-and whipped round, lightning-quick, to seize his companion's ankle in a firm grip, knocking the traitor's feet form under him. He threw his considerably larger body atop his foe, scrabbling for an effective wrestling hold, the Force writhing and shattering about him, ocean surf upon the hard rocks of his intention, evading his grasp as fluidly as the Darshiki squirmed free of his desperate efforts.

"Imbecile Jedi!" Kar'Thon shoved him away, rolled free and sprang to his feet. They squared off, crouching in ready position, the open doorway still blocked by the squat assassin's burly little form.

Obi-Wan panted, cursing his recalcitrant limbs and muscles. The brief tussle seemed to have overtaxed him A fresh coating of perspiration appeared dewlike on his skin, trickled down his nose and chin. Still, he was in a particularly intransigent mood. "Out of my way."

The Darshiki snarled at him. "Idiot boy! Your lord with the other sir lord now. To bring you out, I am charged."

"Over my dead body," the young Jedi tossed back. Then, dangerously, "Or yours." Somewhere in the back of his mind, that suave doppleganger's voice whispered its encouragement. _Yes. Do it. Take him down with your bare hands. He betrayed you. He broke a life-debt oath. He's not to be trusted. He'll kill you if he can._

Kar'Thon reached for something beneath his loose-fitting garments, and brought forth…

Two 'saber hilts.

"Take now," he grunted, proffering the weapons back to their owner.

Obi-Wan gaped. "What?" His legs were wobbling, treacherously close to collapsing under him. His head pounded with each throb of his pulse. His innards felt like pureed jelly. And yet… _my sabers._

They flew into his hands, thranctills returning roost in their mountaintop eyries. A jolt of familiar radiance sparked within him, sonorous with the twin crystals, his dual focusing lens. The Force rose tidal and imposing, a darkened wall poised to crush the cowering Darshiki.

_Do it, do it,_ that angry inner voice demanded.

"Explain," he growled at the tiny assassin.

"Lord of my lord commanded it," Kar'Thon stuttered. "I obey."

Their eyes met, and between them leapt a preposterous revelation. Obi-Wan cursed aloud, though he barely heard his own voice. _Dooku_. There had been no real treason. Kar'Thon had merely gone over his head. Dooku had ordered the Darshiki to betray his own apprentice, to play into Syfo-Dya's arrogance, to initiate this whole chain of events. And now: the turnabout – the double-cross – it was so _very, very_ like the Sentinel's cunning dejarik style. So very ruthless, so very unpredictable.

_He used you like a pawn._

"We come to serve," he spat out, silencing his own outrage. Not now. Not now. _Purpose._

"In antechamber they are. Alone. I take you."

Obi-Wan understood this, too. He clipped the 'saber hilts to the back of his waistband, crossed his arms behind his back, allowed the Darshiki to loosely bind his wrists together. "Let's go."

The tiny assassin bowed low, a reverence paid to a thunder-god, and led his captive Shadow out. Menace rumbled in their wake, the Force fluctuated between deepest umbrage and scintillating Light, a dizzying panoply of fates poured over the future's immanent edge.

* * *

The garden paradise was walled round, and a gate stood at the far end of its labyrinthine path. Qui-Gon stood, and pulled straight his soiled, weather-warn garments, and trod the mossy wending road backward form center to periphery, from destination to departing point, his bare feet passing along the same road out as they had on the way sin, the journey like a homonym: outwardly identical, inwardly diverse.

_Focus determines reality._

With every step, his stride lengthened, particles of memory raining upon the parched plains of his imagination, a floodwater of urgency rising as knowledge gathered into rills and rivulets of certainty.

He had been drawn so madly to this goal, as a moth to Light – unthinking of what lay behind, shedding shi past and present as a heat maddened traveler sheds his garments en route to an oasis. How much had he left behind? What wounds had he inflicted and left to fester without apology or explanation? At what cost had his wisdom be bought, what extremity of sacrifice had his singular devotion demanded?

And who was he to cant of _compassion?_

Outside the crumbling arch stood a low rack, and poised upon this fine-wrought stand, a single lightsaber hilt, the burnished casing untouched by rust or verdigris. His hand closed round it with reverence, the crystal embedded in its heart sparking a hot thrill in his spine, kindling a forgotten radiance in his blood. Compassion, action.

_Life._

He hurried then, sprinting along the worn trail to the plateau's impossible precipice. The sky opened before him, an infinite abyss. Down below, shrouded in mist, lay the waking world, the realm of sentient existence, the fields to which he was indentured laborer.

_We come to serve. To serve, not merely to know. To do, to love, to die, to live._

Crumpled near the edge lay the folds of a pure white cloak, a thing luminous in its own right, spun of fiber so silken and heavy that it had no compare within the galaxy's far-flung borders. He donned the mantel of the Ieng'lis, and strode to the very border of this domain, where the impossible pillar rose majestic, stark and vertical, from its distant foundation.

He exhaled, chest heaving even from the light exertion – and knew himself to be weakened mightily, his body all but wasted by starvation, his muscles lax from lack of nourishment, from long inactivity, his bones aching with an age he had never before felt, his breath burning in lungs no longer accustomed to such strenuous activity. He bent over, hands upon knees, and felt the Living Force coax its way into his protesting cells, chafing and warming from within.

Had he been slowly… discorporating? Thinning into bodiless light as the Shaman and his brethren had? Had his soul longed to break free of this gross mooring and float unfettered upon the Force's currents, leaving his mortal coil forever behind?

_You have much still to accomplish._

He grimaced, and peered into the bottomless drop at his feet. Clouds and mist swirled a hundred meters down; beyond that he knew the climb to be perilous and exacting, a feat worthy of a hero, not some waifish savant dwelling in cloistered bliss at this rarefied summit.

So be it. He had chosen his path – and now he must forge it. Painfully, cautiously, he lowered himself over the uneven lip of rock and sought out a toe-hold, then another. His hands rasped along the jagged cliff-face, digging into crevice and cranny, finding the way by instinctive touch - the intimate exploration of a lover or the desperate grapple of a death-struggle, he could not say which.

And he began the agonizing descent, a prodigal son returning to his long-neglected home.


	21. Chapter 21

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 21**

Outside the detention level's cell bloc stood a round antechamber, a guardroom replrete with ceiling mounted cam-droid cannon and a surveillance console upon a raised dais. The far doors were sealed and reinforced with blast shields. Two mercenaries, one of whom Obi-Wan identified as the malformed Ogg, stood sentinel to either side of the portal, though no other guards or infantry had been brought as reinforcement.

Sifo-Dyas was nothing if not confident in his strategic superiority. And his formidable 'saber skills.

The rogue Shadow stood at his ease, hands folded patiently together as Kar'Thon led the somewhat disheveled and slumping prisoner into his presence. To one side stood Dooku, erect and emanating an air of imperturbability despite his weaponless state, despite the energy cuffs that pinned his own hands behind his back. He had, his apprentice wryly observed, at least had the decency to make a show of total surrender; if this was a charade, it was a thorough one.

But what was Master Dooku if not excruciatingly _thorough?_

Both white-haired men were barricaded behind impenetrable mental shields, fortified within their own minds, their aspirations and reactions as inscrutable to the padawan as they must be to one another. Obi-Wan himself could not manage the slightest psychic deflection, but he also sensed that his …compromised condition… rendered his own mind slippery, his thoughts as scattered and incoherent as leaves blown by a gusting wind. They were all three blind to the others' ruminations and intent, war-ships playing a deadly game in a sea of fog.

He lifted his head and caught Dooku's eye, but the Sentinel only favored him with a single assessing glance, one perhaps seeking to estimate the extent of his injury, or perhaps to gauge his readiness to act. There was no way to tell, for the older man's grey eyes slid sideways to his purported captor a moment later.

Sifo-Dyas stepped forward, treading softly. "Ah, Kenobi. I owe you a debt of thanks; without your earlier bungling interference, I should never have had sufficient enticement to bring Yan Dooku to his knees. You have secured a long-overdue victory for me, through your precious scrupulosity… Have you nothing to say at this tender moment? Your master has agreed to buy your freedom at the cost of his own. Surely you have some parting words for such a noble mentor and friend?"

One of Dooku's brows twitched upward sardonically, clear indication that he would not welcome any such embarrassing display, under any circumstance.

Obi-Wan's breath deepened, steadying his tenuous center in the Light. That obnoxious inner voice gibbered at the edges of awareness; his body trembled with protest. He hoped he had the strength to pull this off, for there would be no further opportunity. "I thank you, Master, for all that you have imparted to me," he said.

The Sentinel's aristocratic features conveyed only noblesse oblige, but a twist of black humor threaded through the Force between them, the double meaning a clear signal.

Sifo-Dyas scowled, his brows beetling over thunderously glittering eyes as he sensed their duplicity.

"Use well what you have been given, Padawan," Dooku intoned, solemnly.

A slight bow. _Force help me now._ "Yes, Master."

There was a single suspended moment in which the floodgates of dammed resolve burst open; another in which two sapphire blades leapt ecstatically from their hilts, double tongues of fire snapping menacingly in the 'cycled air, sweeping in tight arcs to block the pathetic blaster shots aimed by the mercenaries by the door; another in which a downward sweep of the _shoto_ destroyed the binders about Dooku's hands, and in which Sifo-Dyas' blade shot from its own concealement, thrumming deep and wrathful.

His was the first strike, a savage downward _sai cha_; Obi-Wan whirled, his last reserves emptied into this clash, into this consummating moment. He heard the muffled thump of bodies hitting the wall, the sharp _zing_ of blaster fire, but he saw only the battle with his foe, the two of them locked together now in vicious combat, Jar'Kai against Makashi, youth against treachery, outrage pitted against hatred.

The 'sabers clashed and spun, burning effluia erupting along their edges as the plasma blades ground resentfully together, bind, parry, strike, block, lunge, block, sweep, bind. Sifo-Dyas was the fluidity of ink, the evasiveness of shadow, the power of creeping dusk; Obi-Wan was the speed of breaking light, the daring of a soaring thranctill, the desperate strength of a flooding river. They spun and danced about the perimeter, leapt into the center of the confined space, hacked the surveliiance console to pieces, left gaping crimson scars along deck and railing as the wrathful blades missed their mark.

"Master!" Obi-Wan panted, a breathless plea for assistance. They were two here, two against one – surely that was the point. He tossed his _shoto _ blade to the older man, falling back under a renewed fury of attacks.

He ducked a decapitating blow, almost too late. The smoldering scent of burned hair caught at his nostrils, drifting ash showered down about him as he rolled backward, regaining a firm stance, his knees buckling slightly as he staggered into position, blade raised.

They stood now at three points of a circle, faced off across the burn-scored battle field.

"I underestimated your treachery," the fallen Jedi spat at Dooku. "The years have hardened you."

The Sentinel snorted derisively and raised the _shoto_ in an elegant Makashi salute. "A fatal mistake, my old friend. Your reign of terror is at an end."

Obi-Wan's eyes slid to the slumped bodies of Ogg and his companion, both riddled with blaster shots. Kar'Thon was crouched behind the wrecked panels of the control booth, smoking weapon still clutched in his hand. The Darshiki seemed content to let the _sir lords_ settle this dispute on their own terms – though the door controls had also been neatly destroyed, caging the three Jedi in their current grim arena.

Sifo-Dyas arched one thin brow at his rival and former colleague. "But one betrayal deserves another," he murmured, his fluting tones laced with malice. "You have not won yet."

Dooku nodded once at his apprentice, and they fell gracefully into tandem stance, two against one, poised to strike like twin lightning bolts, hunters of darkness, the wrath of Light descending.

"Kenobi," Sifo-Dyas drawled, his thin lips curling with mirthless glee. "Kill this traitor."

And then the impossible happened.

Green mist rose like sickly poison, clotting his field of vision and filling his ears with the roar of blood and thunder. Its miasma seeped inward, prying tendrils sundering the foundation stones of identity, pulling apart self and self until the whispered taunts of the Other rang clarion clear, a reverberating litany.

_He is a traitor. He condemned you to suffering. He used you._

_No. Duty comes first, the mission before personal need._

_He taught you that, dupe. What a well-catechized little tool you are._

_No! Sifo-Dyas is the traitor!_

And amidst the turmoil, two other voices battered at his mind: Dooku commanding hism to resist, Sifo-Dyas urging him onward.

_Kill him! Do it now!_

_Do not succumb, Padawan! Focus!_

_You have no choice! Obey!_

_Remember your purpose! Do not fail now!_

The torrent of conflict pummeled him, a hailstorm of command and entreaty, sophistry and pained denial, the green smoke clinging in his lungs, smothering him, suffocating him on choking darkness, paralyzing him amid the swarming confusion – and then …

As though possessed, he felt his limbs lurch of their own accord, muscles clench, sinews flex. A hot flood of pain spread molten along his spine, shooting venom spread up arms and legs, the equal of any torment he had felt thus far. He bucked and writhed, but the _invaders,_ the nano-droids implanted along his nerves, the filthy pollution growing like toxic mold within his body, spurred him forward in jerking and spasmodic motions.

He fought wildly, the voices howling and screaming at him in chaotic discord, his vital animal self panic-struck and furious, revolted by the machine within, thrashing against invisible bonds, against the horror of enslavement to the inanimate.

"No," he gasped, advancing upon Dooku. "No!"

The Sentinel's eyes widened, genuine shock slackening his jaw for a single instant before he raised his hand and sent his assailant smashing backward into the wall.

The stunning impact knocked his breath clean away; he slid bonelessly to the decks, lungs seizing, even the chaotic impulses of the nano-droids scrambled and delayed. He twitched, trembled, vainly gulped for air.

And in the handful of pounding heartbeats between one minute and the next, he heard the shrieking cacophony of saber blades again, the Sentinels at war with one another, titans clashing in heaven while he shuddered at their feet. He heard the Other's snide appraisal of his defeat, heard his own fingers scrabbling for purchase against the slick flooring.

Kar'Thon's blurred silhouette abruptly appeared above him and brought a fist down hard upon his stomach, doubling him over but somehow loosing his constricted diaphragm. "Uuugh!" he cried out, grabbing for his fallen weapon.

The nano-droids clawed round his spine again, usurping control, blotting out his will. He gritted his teeth, staggered upright against the wall, screamed his defiance, fighting, fighting with his every last particle –

Light erupted then, blooming like wildfire in his cells, an inner flame burning through mortal dross. The agony far surpassed the first; he was a torch alight with the Force, a thousand suns impossibly birthed within his blood, limitless power consuming him, incinerating the microscopic droids, scouring him clean.

_Oh, you'll regret that later,_ the Other pointed out.

_But Sifo-Dyas will regret it now. _ Beyond the reach of any caution, he flung himself forward, burning, the blade of Light in truth and fact, a vessel for the Force, an endless furnace of radiance.

And threw himself upon Sifo-Dyas, a meteor hurtling through heaven, luminous with its own death. Effortlessly, he shoved Dooku aside, wrenched his _shoto _ free of the older man's grip, crashed down upon the fallen Jedi with the power of an unleashed hurricane, twin blades screaming in unison, untamed shards of the sky, tongues of lightning, wings of angels, glory of the rising sun, _justice justice justice –_

The blades flashed, spun, drove around and down.

Sifo-Dyas' hands were struck off at the wrists, a damning _cho mai_ strike to either hand, his blade expiring as it skittered across the deck, his weight falling heavily to his knees as agony ripped through the turgid Force. Obi-Wan brought his blades low, crossed at the traitors throat, humming low now, the deep executioner's bell-toll, death approaching.

_Do it, Obi-Wan, do it. Do it now!_

"Padawan!" Dooku's voice was rife with authority. Completion. Finality. Justice.

Sifo-Dyas looked at him, hatred welling up like magma from the depths of his warped soul, repentance nowhere, mocking laughter mingled with his harsh exhalations. "Weakling child."

_Do it. Do what you must – a Jedi does not fail his cause at the last moment._

He was _burning _ with Light, held up by it, suffused with it, penetrated by it, breathed out of its bosom, shaped and made by it, commanded by it.

In all the rousing chorus of voices calling for death, for murder, for judgment, there was no pure sweet song of inner truth. He reeled in place, halfway out of the body himself, a blade thrumming with a joy so pitched it bordered on pain. Around him, a black storm of power demanded retribution, destruction, avenging fire. But at his still center, this blissful radiant unity, there was a principality greater than war, than strife, than justice itself: the mysterious hand of destiny, the clement imperium of Light.

He thumbed the activation switches; his blades hissed back into their hilts.

_Mercy is stronger. Compassion is stronger. _

But another 'saber blade plunged with ruthless precision through Syfo-Dyas' neck, separating head and torso. Dooku stood behind, grey eyes glittering with the fathomless cold of the stars, the fallen Shadow's own weapon grasped in his age-spotted hand. He tossed the hilt aside as the head rolled from its perch and thudded to the floor. The body gracefully toppled over a moment after that.

And the padawan was third to hit the ground, dropping like a stone in a dead faint.


	22. Chapter 22

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 22**

Qui-Gon came to his senses at the mighty stone pylon's foot, his tattered garments knifed through by winter wind, his face caressed by drifting white flakes. Muzzily, he levered himself upright and pushed his knotted mane back. It had been cool, certainly , when he had ascended the spire, but not this arctic chill. The difference in temperature was astounding, suggestive of a seasonal change, solstice to solstice even…

How long had he been absentee from the temporal realm? A few days, perhaps? A week, maybe even a fortnight?

He could not stay here, however; his wasted body would not sustain him through a night of driving sleet; already he felt feverish and numb. He gathered the folds of the Angels' cloak about his hunched shoulders, the fiber no longer pristine white but grime-stained along the hem, and smeared with rust where his bleeding hands had been wiped during the arduous climb downward from the paradisical summit.

He staggered in the general direction of the encampment he remembered, lost among the standing pillars for longer than he could gauge, a pilgrim wandering in a vast abandoned cathedral, while snow breathed down a deadly benediction in his head. He warmed himself with the Force, but his shuffling gait soon slowed to a crawl, his proud bearing to a stoop. As though held at bay until he had attained the safety of solid ground, his hunger and thirst now clamored loudly for redress, his weary, famished body demanded that which had been too long denied.

When he saw the lanterns ahead, the sulphur glow of lights upon poles, he stumbled toward them with all the humble urgency of a vagrant making for the comfort of a bonfire, a pauper begging for alms. The tribesmen recognized him after a few minutes' stunned mutual regard, surrounding him at once, furs laid atop his cloak, hands steadying his wavering frame.

They led him back to the circle of _urkks_, then, and to the chieftain's domed tent, where hospitality was not so much offered as foisted upon him by the wonder-struck nomads. Broth was tipped down his parched throat, a fire stoked high, blankets piled deep, medicinal chants performed, strange poultices applied, soothing chants intoned by voices hoary with the wisdom of cycles and seasons, hunting and gathering and breeding and birthing, the bone-deep knowledge of those who lived close to the earth and far from the dizzying stars, a people too primitive to have forgotten the Force amid the noise of technology and civilization.

And among such friends, Qui-Gon surrendered himself to the humility of rest and healing, understanding that Life would demand its dues of him, a restoration of the balance he had so callously disregarded, the payment for his perilous journey to the shores of profundity.

He had far to go, and much still to do, to atone for… but for now he slept, cocooned in the fortitude and simple charity of his hosts.

* * *

When Obi-Wan opened his eyes again, his vantage was limited to a swath of dark cloth, a blurring stretch of hard-packed earth, and Dooku's left boot. His brain took an unconscionably long time to integrate the snippets of information into a coherent image; and when it did, he was left wondering what in the blazes he was doing _upside down._

"Have I missed something?" he rasped out, his voice muffled and short-breathed, due to his awkward position slung over the Sentinel's shoulders.

Dooku released a happy sigh, one bespeaking a degree of hard physical exertion, and allowed his cumbersome burden to slide, somewhat inelegantly, back to his feet.

The young Jedi braced himself half against the curved tunnel wall and half against his master, watching the gloomy world tilt and spin and then resolve itself into a barren stretch of subterranean pipeline, a single glow-lamp, and a glowering Darshiki assassin.

"Kar'Thon," he croaked.

"Keep moving, _karbuku_ Jedi imbecile," the pygmy reptilian grunted, stumping up the rough-hewn corridor again, the lantern swinging at his side.

"Our Darshiki friend discovered this passage some time ago; it is rigged to collapse twenty minutes hence. I suggest we make haste."

Obi-Wan stared at the Sentinel, uncomprehending, the splintered fragments of recent memory drifting like fretted snow through his mind. "Where…?"

Dooku braced one arm beneath his shoulders and steered them forward, setting an imperiously brisk pace. "We are beneath the city at present; the Fallen have overrun the streets and occupied every building, swarming without direction or control. We will not risk returning to the surface until you are fit for another confrontation."

The padawan stumbled along beside him, piecing this intelligence together with the sharp throbbing in his head and the aching lassitude in his limbs, the echo of voices in his numb mind. Somewhere in his stunned memory a head rolled to a standstill at his feet, its slanted grey eyes open in shock, its delicate features frozen in a mortal grimace. And about the image, like a blinding nimbus: an apocalypse of Light, an Armageddon of screaming saber-fire, summer lightning atop some mythic peak.

"Sifo-Dyas," he stuttered. "He is dead."

"Yes." Dooku's tone was edged steel, remorseless. "It is done."

Ahead, Kar'Thon impatiently summoned them forward, muttering curses in his native tongue. "Come, come, come," he urged. "Here. Cut through."

Obi-Wan slid to the ground again as Dooku released him. He closed his eyes, drifting between here and nowhere, gripped by an indecent exhaustion. A saber snapped and hissed, and then the shriek of mangled metal, the stink of slag as an aperture was carved through the heavy barricade. Footsteps sounded on the opposite side, and then the treble squeak of two fearful voices, the whine and clack of blasters at the ready.

"Who goes there?"

"This is the Young's territory. Lay down your weapons if you come in peace."

"We are friends, " Dooku's smooth voice assured the nervous sentries. "And in need of refuge."

* * *

Cerasi was there; her hands and voice warm, her presence muting the edges of serrated awareness.

He struggled up to the surface, where light blinded him and the air left harsh welts in his lungs, a prickling salt scum upon his flesh. "Cerasi..?"

"Shh. Shh. Here."

A damp weight settled upon his forehead, a cool dribble of water cascading past his temple to tickle at his ear. He shook his head feebly, attempting to escape the discomfiting sensation. "My master…"

Her disdain soured the Force. "He's gone up to the top, with that… Darshiki creature, and Nield and our scouts. The Fallen have overrun the whole capitol. We've got Melida and Daan refugees here, now… the few that survived. It's bad, Obi-Wan. It's worse than bad. It's the end."

He bolted upright at that, only to regret his audacity a moment later. Cerasi's sharp exclamation of distress was drowned by a chattering hubbub of other voices, whispers and mutterings twining in a placeless green mist, a hundredfold lisping incantation coalescing into a single voice, one he reviled. 'Shut up!" he hissed.

Cerasi recoiled, as though struck.

"No," Obi-Wan moaned, apology too slow to form itself into words, headache blunting his rapier wit to an ineloquent mallet. "No- not you, I'm sorry. Cerasi… I don't know what's wrong with me."

Forgiveness was granted; she pushed him back down, pulled coverlets into place, laid a hand against his fever-heated cheek, her fingertips rasping along the short stubble there. He leaned into the touch, an anchorline of solidity amid a nauseating green sea.

"It will be all right… it will be all right," she soothed him.

But they both knew that was a brave lie.

* * *

Throughout the throes of delirium, he had one constant companion.

"You know," the Other idly observed, "Master Seva says we each carry the Dark Side within our very selves."

"Yes, _I know._ We've read all the same books, remember?"

A snort of impatience. "The real enemy cannot simply be… decapitated."

Obi-Wan rolled over to face the dank wall. Not that it made a difference; one couldn't turn a cold shoulder on oneself any more than expunge the infamous seeds of darkness carried within. "Too bad," he responded dryly.

"Master Seva also says that hatred, once rooted, multiplies and spreads, eating both its host and its own objects – rather like those horrid zombie things on the surface."

The Other had a penchant for digging at open wounds. Obi-Wan suspected him of harboring a sadistic streak. Or was that masochistic? He was quite sure the sick barve would happily indulge in some serious auto-flagellation, given the opportunity.

"Master Seva also says-"

"Do you ever think for yourself?" he snapped, tossing in place again.

"Isn't that _your_ job?" came the whiplash response.

"I can't seem to get a thought in edgewise," he retorted, acidly.

If there was more to the exchange, he could not remember it later; he shivered and sweated through the marches of restless sleep and confused waking, the dead and staring eyes of Sifo-Dyas' gruesome severed head boring into his imagination, haunting the steps of his fevered dreams.

* * *

Dooku returned at the head of the scouting party and breezed through the Young's subterranean warren, brushing past gawkers and sentries alike en route to his padawan. The arrangements were in place; if he could but bring his ailing apprentice to a manageable condition, they could part ways with this mephitic backworld forever, leave this hellish parody to play itself out upon its own decaying stage.

His work here was done.

The red-haired woman was hovering over the boy – young man – with mawkish devotion, her maternal urges tarnished at the edges by something less palatable. He shooed her away with a single burning glance, vexed that his silent dismissal was, though effective, met with a challenging stare quite equal to his own. He raised a brow sharply as the lithe figure brushed past him, taut with annoyance and suspicion.

But of course such was only to be expected from people steeped, of necessity and willful isolation, in ignorance of the Force and its chosen servants. He crouched beside his young charge, feeling the raging pulse beneath his fingers, the unchecked fever wreaking havoc within. Questing with the Force, he discovered mental shields in ruins, a spirit occupied by enemy forces; Dathomiri magic had wrought here a forcible usurpation, rendering the padawan's body and mind as war-torn as the planet itself, the vendetta of Light and Dark working itself out upon a battlefield of flesh and blood.

"Master," Obi-Wan mumbled, only half-conscious.

The Sentinel gathered his considerable skills and resources and attempted another assault upon the root of the malady; but here, in this hate-besotted world, the Force itself was impure, a treacherous tool. His interference seemed only to incite greater pain and struggle – soon enough the padawan was drenched in fresh sweat, twisting instinctively away from his ministrations.

They needed the healers on Coruscant, and soon. He was not about to lose this one… not when they were so very close.

True, Kenobi had faltered in his task at the end – but he had only fallen short of the pinnacle by a hairsbreadth. That last hesitance must be trained out of him, that final imperfection polished way, and he would make one of the finest Shadows the Temple had ever seen. A true master, a force to be reckoned with , a bane of the Dark.

And in such times as loomed upon the horizon, the Light would require fearsome champions indeed. For Sifo-Dyas' visions of the future were not delusions, not madness born of greed or fear. Dooku had seen the same things, planned against the same eventuality, laid his own strategies and tactics against oncoming night. In that fight, the few who stood at the battle front would carry the day; and in such a fight, he would have an ally such as this.

They would depart at dawn, when the Fallen were least active. He had secured a quasi-functional swoop, a vehicle serviceable enough to convey them past the city's gates and back to the Republic shuttle upon the high plateau a few klicks distant. The padawan need only _hold on;_ Dooku was more than match enough for a few score of reanimated corpses endowed with only a glimmering mockery of sentience.

As for those left behind, there were some tragedies he could not hope to avert. The final destruction of this world he understood as his old friend's parting gift to him, a bitter legacy, a festering mark of dishonor scrawled across his personal history. Dooku's thunderous frown shadowed his eyes beneath its stony ridge.

That favor had already been repaid.

"Master," the young Jedi moaned again, responding subliminally to the surge of grim resentment in the Force.

Dooku tightened his mental shields and skimmed a hand over his protégé's furrowed brow. "Sleep, Padawan."

It would be enough, he decided. They would rest now, while the planet rolled ponderously toward another joyless daybreak. And then they would leave this place and its unwholesome revelations forever.


	23. Chapter 23

**Lineage X**

* * *

**Chapter 23**

The fever burned its wick to an ashen twist amid the pooled dregs of his strength, and guttered out, leaving him hollow and fragile as one of those spherical candle lanterns the Felucians lit at festival-time – nothing left the next morning but a translucent rind of wax curled about an aching emptiness.

He sat for a long time, huddled in the blankets and reaching with clumsy fingers for the Force. The effort proved too taxing, but when he gave up the fight and hunched miserably around his own center, he discovered that a small wellspring still burbled at his core, a dirtied trickle of universal Light mixing with the fire-scourged fields of his spirit. It was enough, barely, to nourish him into full wakefulness.

And with that almost abstracted state came a stark clarity, the mottled shadows and hues of his former existence reduced to a sharp chiaroscuro in the wake of consuming fire, the edges of right and wrong traced like skeletal trees against a bleak skyline. He understood what he was expected to do, and what is was he _must_ do. Obedience and submission fell asunder, split in twain like the Other and himself, an impossible distinction but a real one, a liberating distinction.

He found his boots and pulled them on. The exercise left him breathless. His borrowed shirt was ruined, but Cerasi had left another for him. When his fingers brushed over the fiber, he knew it to be the cast-off of a dead man… but such sentimental associations no longer held dread. They were all walking dead upon this planet, unless some miracle of the Force wrought an unlikely salvation for them all. He could wear funerary black, and be content.

He clipped the twin sabers at his sides with reverent care, and went to find Dooku.

* * *

It was Cerasi and Nield he happened upon first.

"They'll be at each others throats again before long, and the killing will start down here – I won't have it. They made their bed, let 'em lie in it." Nield thrust a hand at the motley assembly in the dining hall, encompassing Melida and Daan refugees now huddled in insular knots at opposite ends of the room. Between them, upon a narrow isthmus of battered cafeteria tables, the Young and the rescued children ate their spartan meal in morose silence, the threat of annihilation hanging heavy in the stuffy air.

"I won't turn _anyone_ away from this last shelter," Cerasi insisted. "If we're to die, then we can die shoulder to shoulder at last… a united world." Her mouth twisted into a bitter and unhappy line, and she blinked rapidly.

Nield's face was lined, care-worn, grave. He sighed. "Cerasi."

And she was in his arms, sobbing.

Obi-Wan turned and took his quiet leave, stomach turned by the spectacle of despair. Sifo-Dyas' severed head swam before his eyes again, its shocked grimace horribly transformed to a mocking leer. The rogue Jedi might at last have perished, but who was victorious?

* * *

Dooku was in the Young's makeshift hangar bay, adjusting the intake valves on a salvaged swoop. The Sentinel straightened and favored his apprentice with the rarest gift of a genuine smile, a feral baring of teeth that flashed in and out of existence like fleet lightning. "Ah, there you are. It is long past the hour I wished to depart – but I see your strength is somewhat recovered."

The padawan was mindful of his balance as he made the formal bow to his master. Headache prowled behind his eyes. "We're going to leave, and abandon them," he stated, flatly.

Dooku wiped his hands thoughtfully and took a few paces closer, bringing the padawan into a paternally intimate circle. "There is nothing we can do to reverse their fate," he softly replied. "To stay is to choose destruction alongside them." His grey eyes bored into his young companion's, and a rare softness flitted over his features. "I am sorry. Someday you will understand."

Obi-Wan stiffened. "I do not aspire to such depths of wisdom."

A strong hand reached out and settled upon his shoulder. "Nonetheless it may someday be thrust upon you. That which we do not embrace willingly must be taught through suffering."

"The situation here has changed!" the young Jedi insisted. "The interdiction was put in place before Sifo-Dyas unleashed this plague! Melida and Daan have laid aside their quarrel now, in the face of a greater danger. Surely the Senate –"

"The Senate is a convocation of foolish biddies," Dooku snapped, his voice wavering on the serrated edge of anger. "They will do nothing, even at the Council's behest. And the Council must needs court the favor of politicians, it would seem. My hands are _tied."_

His apprentice blinked, this glimpse into Dooku's inner turmoil as unsettling as the despair of the Young. He saw for a moment the Republic in senile corruption, the Jedi Order reduced to impotent servants of a failing state, a great shadow winging its way over the galaxy, pillaging and laying low system after system because there was none to stand in its way… he wrenched his focus back to the here and now.

"Sifo-Dyas clearly has allies within the Republic – dare I posit, within the Senate. We shall hunt them down and expose them. This must satisfy you, padawan. The deaths of your friends will be avenged. Justice will be served."

"I don't want to avenge them; I want to _save_ them!"

But the Sentinel shook his silver head, sadly. "We shall defer this discussion until you are quite in your right mind again; our first priority must be to see the Temple healers."

The implication that his words could be reduced to the truculent protestations of a lunatic _rankled._ "What of Kar'Thon?" Obi-Wan pressed. "Is he too to be sacrificed on the altar of expediency?"

"He will accompany us back to Coruscant – the information he holds about Sifo-Dyas' organization may prove invaluable. And when he has given a full deposition to the Council, you will release him from his life-debt. I think he has quite repaid it in loyal service."

And that was a bitter lash across unhealed scars. "Loyal service! We _used_ him!" The prick of conscience redoubled the pain. "And you _used me! _ You played me like a dejarik piece!" He trembled, suppressed outrage taking away his breath.

Dooku raised one censorious brow. "We come to serve, Padawan. What are any of us but tools of a higher purpose? We are every one of us _used_ by the Force to achieve balance. This is the nature of your chosen path. Why rebel against its strictures now?"

There was a good argument against that point of view, the young Jedi felt certain – but the throbbing in his head made it difficult to formulate. He clenched his fists, fighting back mounting rage. "I do not wish to serve any Purpose which abandons innocents to despair and bitter death."

The Sentinel took a step back. "Careful, now," he warned, voice dropping a half-octave in sober exhortation. "Dalliance with such emotions is a path to the Dark. Sacrifices _must_ be made; those unwilling to make them flirt with obscene arrogance, the need to play universal savior. Come to your senses!"

"I just have!" Obi-Wan squared his shoulders and tilted his chin upward. "These people deserve help, and I will give it!"

Dooku's face hardened in fury. "You will obey my order; do not be forsworn."

"I swore to serve the _Light,_ Master. And so I will."

They faced off, the Force thundering about them, vast drums echoing in the plenum. "That is _enough, _ Qui-Gon!" Dooku shouted, fear and anger and the long weight of decades rasping in his strident tones.

And in that moment, fate was sealed. Obi-Wan smiled, softly, buried loyalties blooming like melting fires beneath crusted ice, a flood of joyful certainty joining the roll of thunder in the Force.

Dooku's tone dropped to a murmur. "You do realize I could overpower you and haul you back to Coruscant by physical force, like the recalcitrant child you are?"

Obi-Wan stepped back another pace, hands resting upon his 'saber hilts. "I will not go _willingly."_

Silence. The first lightning bolt struck, cleaving their solidarity in two, rending obedience from submission, purpose from compassion, service from devotion. Their breaths textured the cold air of the hangar, fueled two racing pulses.

"So be it," Dooku growled, aristocratic features drawn and pinched. He withdrew a small object from an inner pocket. "This, I believe, is yours."

Obi-Wan gravely accepted his Vespari knife back. Chest heaving, he unclipped his 'saber hilts and held them out to the Jedi master.

"No," the Sentinel decided, eyes darkened by inscrutable emotion. "Keep them. When the time comes, you may be glad of a swift and honorable death."

The weapons were returned to their places. There was nothing more to say.

Dooku reached out then and took the dangling padawan braid between his fingers, deftly unbinding the threads and markers, pulling the twisted plait apart, unraveling the labyrinthine path back to its root and origin, until the chestnut strands fluttered unmoored and free, the fluttering ash wafting off a cooling pyre.

"You are wedded now to futile ambition and the tyranny of your own folly. Walk this path alone, for it leads to naught but extinction." He raked over his companion with a cold gaze, one behind which regret and sorrow were tightly locked away, and turned his back with a sharp finality.

Obi-Wan watched him depart, the black cloak a forlorn attendant scuttling at its master's heels, his last chance of escape from this graveyard of hope fading into the distance with Dooku's proud figure.

* * *

Cerasi's tear-stained face transformed to radiant gratitude when he told her.

"I – I hardly know – you – " She blushed, and more tears sprang up to replace those already spilled. "Thank you," she whispered. "For all of us. Thank you."

Obi-Wan gazed over the ragged assembly of Melida, Daan, Young, the tiny children, the weary elders, the battle-hardened men and women in their prime, every one of them grimy and hungry and frightened, the last holdouts of life on a world given over to a reign of terror beyond all imagining.

They would be lucky to survive more than a week, more than a few days. They would be lucky not to end as mindless zombies themselves, a fate worse than death. They would be lucky to stave off famine, disease, and internecine strife. They would be lucky not to embrace Darkness and utter despair before the end.

But he did not believe in luck.

Chilled, weak, the mocking voice of the Other pouring black counsel in his ear, he stood tall and faced his chosen future. "Cerasi. Gather Nield and whomever else you trust. We need to make a plan."

He would not consider the impossibility of victory, nor the overwhelming power of hatred and despair, nor the inevitability of death, nor that which he had renounced forever, his birthright and heritage. There was only the moment, and the will of the Force.

And Compassion.

He finally understood.

* * *

The chieftain's words fell at first upon uncomprehending ears, rainfall upon drought-baked earth.

"The trading vessels," the patient elder repeated, his wrinkled face and crescent eyes peering in concern at the haggard Jedi master. "They have arrived. Will you depart again?"

Sluggishly, his mind ground back into gear. Trading vessel. Hyperlanes. The Core. Yes.

Qui-Gon stood, and managed a bow. "Yes, yes I shall. I thank you for your hospitality and care. I am forever in your debt for such kindness."

His host merely smiled and spread both hands out, fingers splayed like the feathers of a soaring thranctill.

The tall man accepted the traditional blessing with humble gratitude, and gathered his things: a cloak, a 'saber, a packet of food wrapped in silken thread, a gift of the tribe's women. The freighters stood a short distance away, their captains and crew milling about their ramps, a mundane and jarring anomaly in this land of rarefied dreams.

He inhaled, exhaled, centering himself in the Force like a child venturing forth on its first expedition into the unfamiliar world. He would beg for passage, work for it if his Jedi status did not merit a free berth. He would meditate on his mistakes, and on his newfound wisdom, and prepare himself to face the Council's judgment.

And above all, he would look forward to a blessed reunion. He smiled, thinking of that bright luminary in the Force, of that mercuric wit and brilliant smile, that melting compassion and peerless courage. He would endure whatever penance and chastisement he deserved, for the privilege of mending even that one precious friendship.

He strode onward, trepidated and eager at once, lightheaded with weariness and hope.

He was at last going home.

**END BOOK X**


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